Nearly 6,000 arrests. $293 million seized. 97 countries involved.
Operation First Light 2026 is one of the biggest coordinated fraud crackdowns ever. Between January 15 and April 30, law enforcement agencies across the globe targeted social engineering scams — business email compromise, sextortion, romance scams, investment fraud, you name it.
Interpol coordinated the whole thing. The results go well beyond arrests. Authorities blocked 31,014 bank accounts, analyzed over 152,000 cases, and identified 15,606 suspects. They also used Interpol’s payment-freezing system to block illicit transfers in both fiat and crypto.
More than 142,000 victims were identified worldwide. That number alone shows how massive the problem is.
This isn’t Interpol’s first big operation. Operation Synergia II led to 41 arrests and the seizure of over 1,000 servers. Operation Synergia III, running from July 2025 to January 2026, sinkholed tens of thousands of IP addresses. In Africa, Operation Serengeti and Operation Africa Cyber Surge have taken down multi-million-dollar criminal operations.
The funding for First Light 2026 came from China’s Ministry of Public Security, with support from regional policing bodies in Southeast Asia, the Gulf, and Europe.
Interpol’s Tomonobu Kaya said it straight: criminal syndicates exploit human psychology, and no country stays safe unless every country fights back together.
