The U.S. Treasury urged financial institutions to strengthen suspicious transaction reporting and information sharing to respond to crypto investment scams by overseas fraud groups. The amount recorded in related reports totalled about $12.7 billion, making it a key task to trace routes of criminal funds.

On Sept. 17 (local time), IT outlet TechRadar reported that the Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) recommended banks, credit unions, crypto exchanges and brokerages report suspicious transactions tied to overseas scam centres more precisely.

FinCEN's analysis of Bank Secrecy Act filings from September 2023 to the end of 2025 showed 33,904 reports, with suspicious transaction amounts totalling about $12.7 billion. It is not confirmed losses. The filings included attempted and completed transactions, and the same movement of funds may have been reported multiple times.

FinCEN introduced a new filing keyword, "FIN-2026-SCAMCENTERS", to flag possible involvement of overseas scam centres. It asked financial institutions to submit information they have secured, including chat records, scammers' phone numbers, social media accounts, crypto wallet addresses, transaction hashes and related URLs.

The key is to link transaction information scattered across financial institutions. Banks can confirm only remittances headed to exchanges, while exchanges can confirm only crypto purchases and outbound transfers, making it difficult to grasp the full flow of criminal funds from individual reports alone. FinCEN therefore recommended that financial institutions actively take part in voluntary information sharing under relevant laws.

FinCEN's Rapid Response Program has blocked about $1.8 billion in scam funds linked to 5,790 U.S. victims since 2015 and recovered more than $1 billion. These results are not limited to crypto investment scams and include several types of cyber financial fraud.

As overseas fraud groups move funds through banks and crypto exchanges, linking information among financial institutions and making swift reports is being emphasised as a key means to prevent the spread of harm.