Photo source: FBI director Kash Patel on X.
Accra: US and Ghanaian authorities have arrested scores of internet fraudsters accused of netting more than $10 million in scams, the FBI said Thursday, the latest in an operation targeting "scam compounds".
Fraudsters operating in huge teams out of houses or apartment complexes target people around the world -- often older people in wealthy countries -- with high-profile cases emerging from southeast Asia as well as Nigeria in recent years.
"Another takedown this week out of Ghana," FBI director Kash Patel announced on social media, posting a photo of US agents alongside Ghanaian authorities.
Patel said that 130 people were arrested, including people who had been trafficked and forced to work in the compound, over scams targeting 89 people.
Photo source: FBI director Kash Patel on X
Neither the victims' nor the alleged perpetrator's nationalities were specified.
The raid was the latest in the FBI's "Operation Blackout", which focuses on internet scam rings.
"These scam compounds target American citizens and destroy lives," Patel said.
Aided by the spread of the internet, artificial intelligence, such fraudsters are notorious for targeting older, less tech-savvy people in richer, western countries.
Patel said the Operation Blackout had so far seized $17 billion worldwide and warned more than 10,000 Americans at risk of being scammed.
In Nigeria, scammers are nicknamed "Yahoo boys", for their use of Yahoo email addresses in the early 2000s, though their frauds have grown more complex since those early days.
Victims know no nationality: in Ghana, AFP reported last year on a rise in teens turning toward internet and mobile money fraud targeting fellow Ghanaians, amid a weak economy.
In February, Interpol announced that police in 16 African countries had arrested 651 people in an eight week operation that targeted investment scams, mobile money fraud and fraudulent mobile loan applications.
