Interpol completed the operation “Operation First Light 2026”, making 5.811 arrests and seizing $293 million in illicit assets, primarily targeting social engineering scams. 
The operation, which lasted from January to April, highlighted the transnational nature of organized crime, and the operation of criminal networks in 97 countries. Authorities “froze” over 31.000 bank accounts.
The numbers behind the business say a lot about the scale of the problem and the results.
Investigators examined 152.808 cases, closed 23.715 of them, identified 15.606 suspects and froze 31.014 bank accounts. More than 142.000 victims were identified worldwide, a figure that, according to Interpol, shows how far social engineering fraud has moved from isolated scams to organized, transnational crime.
“Criminal syndicates exploit human psychology to manipulate their targets,” said Tomonobu Kaya, director of Interpol’s Economic Crime and Anti-Corruption Center, adding that no country can combat the problem alone and that a coordinated global response is the only real defense.
Individual cases resemble movie scripts. In Eswatini, South Africa, police arrested 82 people and dismantled a network that was running illegal online gambling, money laundering and impersonation scams.
Police seized 240 electronic devices and a complete replica of a Brazilian police station, complete with fake uniforms, plates and equipment. The group used them to make video calls impersonating the Brazilian Federal Police, convincing victims that they were targets of crime and pressuring them to send their money for “safekeeping” which then disappeared. The digital evidence was so extensive that Interpol sent a special forensic support team.
Interpol funded Operation First Light 2026 through the Chinese Ministry of Public Security, with support from ASEANAPOL, GCCPOL, and Europol. And this was not an isolated effort. Interpol has conducted a number of large coordinated operations recently, from Synergia III (which seized tens of thousands of malicious IP addresses) to Red Card 2.0 (651 arrests across Africa). Mass seizures like this could become a regular fixture in Interpol’s calendar.
What we don’t know is whether all of this is actually shrinking the problem. The FTC recorded $3,5 billion in fraud in the US alone in 2025, an increase of about 25% over the previous year. The FBI estimates total losses in the US from cybercrime at nearly $21 billion during the same period. Both of those numbers were from just one country. Operation First Light 2026 covered 97.
Although the press releases will range from very select to rare, I said I'd pass...because sometimes the editors hide.
