INTERPOL has wrapped up one of its largest ever coordinated crackdowns on global fraud, with Operation First Light 2026 resulting in nearly 5,811 arrests and the interception of roughly 293 million dollars in illicit assets across 97 countries and territories. The four-month operation focused on dismantling social engineering scams, including business email compromise, romance fraud, impersonation schemes, and sextortion, along with the money laundering networks that move their proceeds.
Investigators worked through more than 150,000 cases during the operation, freezing over 31,000 bank accounts and identifying upwards of 142,000 victims worldwide. Authorities relied heavily on INTERPOL’s Global Rapid Intervention of Payments system, a stop-payment mechanism that can freeze suspicious transfers of both traditional currency and virtual assets before they settle, to choke off funds before they disappeared into the financial system.
Some of the individual cases uncovered during the operation were striking in scale. In Eswatini, police dismantled a network that had built a realistic replica of a Brazilian police station, complete with fake uniforms and signage, which scammers used during video calls to convince victims they were under official investigation. Elsewhere, authorities in Singapore and Oman jointly intercepted a 6.6 million dollar transfer linked to a business email compromise scheme targeting a commodities trading firm.
INTERPOL officials say the sheer scale of victims identified during the operation underscores how social engineering fraud has evolved into a major transnational threat affecting individuals, businesses, and governments alike. With investigations still ongoing in several participating countries, officials expect further arrests and asset seizures as authorities continue tracing money through increasingly complex cross-border laundering networks, including those using cryptocurrency to obscure the trail of stolen funds.
