Americans are under attack. The frontline doesn’t look like a battlefield, but it’s a computer screen, a phone, or a social media message. The bipartisan US-Time and China’s Economic Security Review Committee recently completed a report detailing the large Southeast Asia fraud center run by China’s criminal network systematically stealing billions of dollars of Americans a year.
These are not one-off crime operations. They are industrial-scale fraud factories that have transformed digital deception into one of the world’s most lucrative criminal enterprises, compete and by some estimates outweigh the global drug trade. Our recent committee findings show that Americans lost more than $5 billion in scams tied to these networks in 2024 alone.
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Victims are not faceless statistics. The Oklahoma couple lost more than $5 million (life savings aimed at retirement) in Maryland, but one casualty was fasted for just over $3 million in months, shattered into a “pig attack” scheme with false romance and crypto investment.
But these fraud centers aren’t just theft. They represent something even more troublesome. A criminal enterprise run by the committee that it deems “implicit support from elements of the Chinese government.” Beijing tolerate these operations when targeting Americans, but cracks down on Chinese citizens when it harms them. Even more unsettlingly, the committee concluded that China is “abusing the problem” of these fraudulent compounds, promoting its own interests.
This selective enforcement fits a larger pattern. These operations thrive not only because of local corruption and weak enforcement, but also because Beijing has deliberately chosen a tolerant environment. Whether it’s a fentanyl precursor, a cyber operation, or the current trend of these fraud networks, China consistently exploits the grey zone.
Behind these frauds, China’s crime syndicate is in line with Beijing’s geopolitical agenda, according to the committee’s findings. These groups echo the provider propaganda, the support belt and road initiative project, and the patriotic rhetoric of China. In return, they often have little interference and sometimes even strategic utility to the state operates. The committee’s analysis suggests that this represents an indirect form of statecraft. This helps China expand its impact, corrupt its neighbors and undermine US interests.
The committee’s findings place these fraudulent operations within a broader pattern of China’s national action. This is not about cataloging unrelated complaints, but about recognizing a consistent strategy. Just as Beijing tolerate the flow of fentanyl precursors poisoning American communities while cracking down on the domestic drug problem, it has allowed criminal networks to target American victims while protecting Chinese citizens. The patterns are consistent. Activities that harm the United States operate with minimal interference, but those that affect China face rapid action. Through cyber operations, intellectual property theft, or currently these fraud centers, China is taking advantage of the grey zone that offers strategic advantages while maintaining denial.
This is not about politics, it is about the resilience of the nation. Americans deserve to know how foreign enemies are targeting them, not just through traditional means, but through criminal networks and digital manipulation. Law enforcement, financial institutions and the high-tech sector all play a role in tightening the screws in these fraud centers, but there is a need to clearly understand the state-level strategies behind them.
At the same time, recent efforts by the Trump administration to streamline the State Department and USAID (such as cutting sharp staff and consolidating programs) will award key questions about the institutional focus. These changes can be driven by efficiency, but there is also the risk of denialing such long-term threats. Protecting Americans from cross-border cyber-response fraud should remain a priority for diplomacy, development and law enforcement, not a victim of the reorganization.
The committee’s report makes one thing clear. The United States is not just dealing with criminals. We deal with exploitation systems that serve the interests of authoritarian states that view disruption abroad as leverage at home.
Americans are not passive victims. But we need to awaken to the nature of the threat. While fraud centers may look like low-level crime, they are far more serious. It’s a quiet front of much broader conflict.
We can’t afford to plea while watching innocent Americans cut their retirement savings, college funds, and life savings by criminal syndicates from their bank accounts that the committee’s report is listed as being run with geopolitical support. Closing these fraud centers must be part of the conversation as the Trump administration continues to negotiate trade deals and continue to engage with China.
Mike Kuiken is a commissioner of the bipartisan US Economic and Economic Review Committee and a renowned visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institute.
Randy Schriver is Vice Chair of the US-China Economic and Security Review Committee and Chief Executive Officer of the Indo-Pacific Security Institute (IIP).
The view expressed in this article is the author himself.
