20-Year-Old Cryptocurrency Wallet Transferred $123 Million in Cash in Romance Scam: Interpol Says

A 20-year-old’s cryptocurrency wallet moved more than $122.5 million in just 10 months as part of a scheme to launder money stolen from romance fraud victims, Interpol said, in one of the high-profile cases in a wide-ranging global anti-fraud operation.

Thai police arrested two people in the case. According to Interpolwhich said the operators converted the proceeds into a mix of cryptocurrencies and used cross-chain token swaps, transferring funds between different blockchains, to hide where the money went.

The arrests were part of Operation First Light 2026, a coordinated crackdown that lasted from mid-January to the end of April in 97 countries and territories. Interpol said that the authorities arrested 5,811 people, intercepted $293 million in illicit assets, and identified more than 142,000 victims, while freezing 31,014 bank accounts and analyzing more than 152,000 cases. Some freezes have relied on I-GRIP, Interpol’s stop-payment mechanism that can halt flows of traditional funds and virtual assets.

Tomonobu Kaya, who heads Interpol’s Financial Crime and Anti-Corruption Centre, said criminal gangs “exploit human psychology to manipulate their targets,” adding that no country can remain safe unless they all come together.

Slaughtering pigs and laundering cryptocurrencies

Romance scams, often called “pig slaughter,” typically begin with a stranger building a relationship over weeks or months before steering the target toward a fake cryptocurrency investment. Once victims’ funds reach the chain, money launderers move quickly to break the trail, moving funds across blockchain networks and swapping tokens until investigators lose the lead.

This pattern has become more solid as the implementation process has intensified. The flows generated by these operations increasingly rely on stablecoins, low-fee blockchains, and fast cross-chain swaps to “fractionate movement and buy time,” said Ari Redbord, a former US Treasury official who now works at blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs. He said Decryption Last year, after Interpol officially classified complex fraud networks as a transnational threat affecting victims in more than 60 countries.

The amounts involved are enormous. UN investigators estimate that pig slaughter generated tens of billions of dollars between 2020 and 2024, much of it flowing from fortified complexes in Southeast Asia that rely on trafficked and forced labor. Cambodia since then I submitted a law Fraud bosses threatened life imprisonment, and US courts handed down long sentences, including 20 years for one fugitive Linked to a $73 million money laundering scheme.

Thailand and crypto crime

Thailand is located on the front line, bordering the regions of Myanmar and Cambodia, where many complexes operate. Its Cybercrime Investigation Bureau receives about 800 complaints daily, most of them related to fraud or money laundering using cryptocurrencies, according to a report. Case study 2025 By TRM Laboratories. Bangkok has become a frequent detention point for fugitive suspects, including a Portuguese man Accused of $580 million Cryptocurrency and card fraud was arrested there in 2025.

Blockchain analytics company Chainalysis estimated Cryptocurrency scam flows soared in 2025, with average scam payouts more than tripling to $2,764, as scammers incorporate artificial intelligence, phishing tools, and multi-layered laundering networks into their operations.

The First Light campaign, funded by China’s Ministry of Public Security and supported by regional police agencies, is just one campaign in a growing effort, as Interpol’s toll of more than 142,000 victims in a single four-month window demonstrates the scale of the challenge facing law enforcement.