Subcommittee Chairmen Guest, Ogles Open Hearing on Online Scams, Crypto Fraud, and Digital Extortion by Transnational Criminal Organizations

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Today, Subcommittee on Border Security and Enforcement Chairman Michael Guest (R-MS) and Subcommittee on Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection Chairman Andy Ogles (R-TN) delivered the following opening statements in a hearing to asses the risks associated with the use of digital technologies, including cryptocurrency, online platforms, artificial intelligence (AI), and global financial systems, by transnational criminal networks to exploit Americans.

Watch Subcommittee Chairman Guest's opening statement here .

As prepared for delivery:

Good morning, welcome to the Border Security and Enforcement and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection joint subcommittee hearing examining how transnational criminal networks are increasingly targeting Americans in the digital world to expand their illicit activities and increase their profits through scams, fraud, and extortion.

As technology has evolved and web-based services have crossed traditional borders, cyber-enabled financial crime has risen sharply. Transnational criminal networks from Mexican drug trafficking organizations to Southeast Asia scam operations are targeting Americans. With an expanding arsenal of digital tools available in the public sphere, we must build and maintain a strong defense against cyber-enabled criminals.

Most Americans have encountered some sort of scam enabled by technology. These scams often target our aging and elderly families and constituents - seeking to drain their life savings and retirement plans using emotional manipulation tactics. In 2025 alone, scammers stole more than $20 billion from Americans.

Criminal networks use the digital domain to promote their illicit activities. Mexican drug trafficking organizations are increasingly leveraging cryptocurrency in order to launder their ill-gotten gains. The challenging nature of tracing cryptocurrency provides a landscape where Mexican drug cartels and other criminal organizations can launder money by converting profits from illegal activities into digital currency, which can be accessed across the world in a matter of seconds.

Through this digital marketplace, the Mexican cartels are utilizing Chinese money laundering networks as a piece to their business model. President Trump issued an executive order designating certain cartels and transnational criminal organizations as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs), which has created opportunities to use new authorities to combat drug cartels and organized criminal organizations.

Cyber-enabled crime not only victimizes Americans but also raises concerns for American national security interests. Just last week in his testimony before the House Appropriations Committee, Todd Lyons, the Acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, spoke about a major Homeland Security investigation involving Chinese Communist Party actors committing gift card fraud, and sending proceeds back to military units in China.

Digital extortion, which is another form of cyber-crime, has serious national security implications. These ransomware attacks often involve foreign actors targeting sensitive industries like education, government, and healthcare databases, holding data or systems hostage, and demanding payment for its release. My home state of Mississippi just recently experienced a major ransomware attack, and I know that many of my colleagues' districts have experienced serious attacks as well. The severity and increasing frequency of these attacks is deeply concerning.

Our critical infrastructure, our data, and our constituents must be protected - Congress must step up to secure our virtual border. President Trump's recent executive order identifying cyber-enabled crime as a priority and pushing an offensive approach on combatting cybercrime, is a positive step but must be built upon. Given the role of industry, public private partnerships are critical to facing these threats head-on. It is important that Congress examine how transnational criminal organizations are exploiting digital technologies and targeting Americans.

Today, we have with us expert witnesses who will share their insight on this growing issue and provide a valuable discussion on how Congress can work to combat financial crime.

Watch Subcommittee Chairman Ogles's opening statement here .

As prepared for delivery:

Thank you, Chairman Guest, for holding this joint hearing and for partnering with my Subcommittee to examine what has become one of the most urgent and far-reaching threats to the American people today.

The hearing we are convening this morning concerns a problem that touches every community in this country. It affects retirees in Tennessee and Florida, college students in Mississippi and New York, small business owners in the Midwest, veterans, teachers, and families who do nothing wrong other than answer a phone call, open an email, or respond to what appeared to be a trusted message online. What they encounter on the other end is not a legitimate contact. It is an organized criminal operation, often run from a fortified compound halfway around the world, designed from the ground up to steal their money, their personal information, and in many cases their sense of safety and dignity.

I want to be clear about what we are dealing with. What is happening to Americans right now is an industrial-scale criminal campaign, coordinated by transnational criminal organizations that operate sophisticated fraud networks spanning multiple continents and targeting millions of victims simultaneously. These operations combine cyber fraud, money laundering, cryptocurrency manipulation, digital extortion, and in many documented cases, human trafficking and forced labor.

The numbers released just weeks ago by the FBI confirm how rapidly this threat is accelerating. The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center received more than one million complaints in 2025, the first time that threshold has ever been crossed. Reported losses surpassed twenty billion dollars for the first time, representing a twenty-six percent increase over the prior year. Americans over the age of sixty reported losing nearly eight billion dollars, a fifty-nine percent increase in a single year. And for the first time, the FBI dedicated an entire section of its annual report to the role of artificial intelligence in enabling these crimes, documenting more than twenty-two thousand complaints with an AI-related component.

Behind these numbers are real people whose lives have been upended. Seniors who lost their retirement savings to a voice-cloned phone call from someone they believed was a grandchild in distress. Young people targeted by sextortion schemes designed to exploit fear and shame. Small investors lured into fraudulent cryptocurrency platforms through deepfake videos of trusted public figures. Business owners locked out of their own systems by ransomware and forced to choose between paying a ransom to criminals or watching years of work disappear.

These networks are deeply connected to organized transnational syndicates, many run by organized crime groups with roots in the People's Republic of China and the Russian Federation. Hundreds of thousands of people have been trafficked into scam compounds across Southeast Asia, forced to carry out fraud under threat of violence and death. Chinese nationals and PRC-linked triads operate the largest compounds, and Beijing has been slow to act against networks that victimize Americans while generating billions along China's periphery.

Artificial intelligence is making all of this worse. Criminal organizations are using AI to clone voices, produce deepfake videos, and automate the targeting of millions of victims simultaneously, and ransomware groups are integrating AI into their attack chains to launch attacks faster than defenses can respond.

This Administration recognizes the severity of the threat, and I want to commend President Trump for taking decisive action. On March 6, the President signed an Executive Order on Combating Cybercrime, Fraud, and Predatory Schemes Against American Citizens. That order directs the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies to conduct a comprehensive review of existing operational and regulatory tools and to develop a coordinated action plan to identify, disrupt, and dismantle the transnational criminal organizations behind these schemes. That is exactly the kind of whole-of-government approach that this moment demands.

The American people deserve a government that fights for them with the same intensity that these criminal networks use against them. Our witnesses today will help us understand the full scope of this threat and the tools we need to combat it. I look forward to their testimony.

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