In brief
Thai police arrested two people over a scheme that laundered romance-scam proceeds through crypto, using cross-chain swaps to hide the trail, Interpol said. One suspect, aged 20, controlled a wallet that processed more than $122.5 million in 10 months.
The arrests came out of Operation First Light 2026, a four-month push across 97 countries and territories that led to 5,811 arrests and the interception of $293 million in illicit assets.
Interpol said it identified more than 142,000 victims and blocked over 31,000 bank accounts, using its I-GRIP stop-payment tool to check the flows of fiat and virtual assets.
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-scam victims, Interpol said, in one of the standout cases from a sweeping global anti-fraud operation.Thai police made two arrests in the case, according to Interpol, which said the operators funneled the proceeds into a mix of cryptocurrencies and used cross-chain token swaps, shifting funds between different blockchains, to obscure where the money went.
