In a single day, Jeanine Pirro's Scam Center Strike Force took over $52 million in cryptocurrency tied to a Chinese-run fraud operation that had processed an estimated $24 billion in illicit funds. Not million. Billion, with a B.
The operation targeted something called Xinbi Guarantee — a Chinese-language marketplace run on Telegram where vendors openly marketed their services to scam center operators.
Pirro, serving as U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, announced the action on social media: "My Scam Center Strike Force took decisive action to dismantle illicit networks targeting innocent victims." The Department of Justice confirmed the coordinated strike, noting that the Strike Force and the Department of the Treasury "took coordinated actions against Xinbi Guarantee... bringing the total restrained by the Scam Center Strike Force to approximately $938 million."
Nearly a billion dollars seized. From one strike force. Operating out of one U.S. Attorney's office.
The Treasury Department's own estimates put Xinbi's total transaction volume at $24 billion. The marketplace functioned as a one-stop shop for criminals running "pig butchering" cryptocurrency schemes — those elaborate cons where scammers build fake relationships with victims over weeks or months, then steer them into fraudulent investment platforms that drain their accounts.
The victims aren't abstractions. One social media user shared what happened to her mother: "My mom just got scamed out of $1400 from someone in china pretending to be from Apple... They took her entire social security check." Fourteen hundred dollars. An entire month's income for a woman on Social Security, wired straight to a Chinese fraud ring operating openly on Telegram.
The Xinbi takedown wasn't an isolated move. The DOJ, FBI, and Department of the Treasury coordinated the operation, and it came alongside the dismantling of 13 Chinese-run scam compounds in Madagascar. The scope of the network — spanning continents, running through encrypted messaging apps, processing billions through cryptocurrency — makes the $52 million single-day seizure look like a down payment.
Some corners of the internet have already started with the "this is just performative" line. Which is an interesting way to describe $938 million in total restrained assets, a multi-agency international operation, and 13 physical compounds shut down across an ocean. Performative usually doesn't come with a Treasury Department press release and a nine-figure seizure total.
As RedState reported, the operation represents exactly the kind of aggressive enforcement the Trump administration promised against foreign criminal enterprises preying on Americans. Pirro — who spent years as a prosecutor and judge before her television career and now holds one of the most powerful federal prosecutor positions in the country — is running the D.C. U.S. Attorney's office like someone who actually wants to use it.
The $24 billion pipeline is damaged. The $938 million running total keeps climbing. And somewhere, a woman on Social Security might not lose next month's check to a Telegram storefront pretending to be Apple.
That's what a federal prosecutor's office looks like when it's pointed at the right target.
