The Trump administration is targeting the “entire chain” of foreign scammers, Tommy Pigott, principal deputy spokesperson for the U.S. State Department, said during an appearance on Breitbart News Daily.
Describing these as “really organized groups,” Pigott explained just how serious this issue is by highlighting the tremendous total losses in 2024 — $10 billion in the U.S. alone.
“One of the things we’re doing — actually three recent actions — we just announced yesterday, sanctions against over 20 individuals that are tied to some of these groups that are targeting the United States with fraudulent investment schemes, promising romance or friendship or other things like that,” Pigott explained.
He also said the Trump administration is working to increase the reward amount or “establish rewards for those that are helping to launder this money through cryptocurrency.”
“We’ve also seen changes to that effect. So cryptocurrency is often being used to make sure that they can actually translate these stolen assets into things that they can use,” he said. “So we’re targeting the entire chain here — from these operational centers themselves, which can be very vast, to the money launderers that are helping them change these schemes into things that they actually can profit from and actually use.”
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Most of these scam centers are in Southeast Asia, creating a “spillover effect throughout the region,” Pigott explained. Because of this, targeting the foreign scammers requires the U.S. to work with other countries in the region.
“We’re actually seeing a lot of cooperation from governments and countries in order to allow us to go after these people, to target these people,” he said, adding, “One of the tools that the State Department has is the ability to establish those rewards. So we can issue rewards for information. You know, the typical reward people might be thinking of for someone that’s wanted by authorities, so we can issue that reward.”
“And we’re actually seeing the establishment of awards targeting these cryptocurrency launderers that are the first of their kind. So we’re really expanding the fact that we’re going out to this entire ecosystem in order to protect the American people,” he said, identifying this as a key tool.
He added that one of the talking points at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) conference was “countering these scam centers with our partners there.”
“So we’re seeing this cooperation on a security effort,” he added.
Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.