As a result of an investigation by the FBI San Diego Field Office, federal authorities have seized and shut down a web domain used to defraud Americans through cryptocurrency investment-fraud scams, officials announced Tuesday.
More than 400 San Diegans were among the victims of the Southeast Asia-based criminal enterprise, suffering an estimated cumulative loss of roughly $90 million in the 2024 fiscal year, according to the FBI.
However, federal investigators said they believe that figure to be a fraction of the total scope of losses, given that many victims do not report their losses to law enforcement.
Victims of the scams — a type that fraudsters refer to as “pig butchering” — reported to the FBI that tickmilleas.com showed supposed lucrative returns on what they believed to be their investments and displayed purported deposits made by scammers to the victims’ “accounts.”
“Pig butchering is an investment scam where fraudsters gain the trust of victims over time and then deceive them into investing in fake crypto assets or another fraudulent investment opportunity,” according to California’s Department of Financial Protection and Innovation. “The term refers to the agricultural practice of fattening pigs before slaughter, symbolizing how scammers ‘fatten’ their victims with false attention before exploiting them financially.”
A quick check of Google yields dozens of stories of Californians who were “pig butchering victims over the past few years. One report cited an FBI source who said nearly $4 billion was siphoned off from Americans by the fraudsters operating the con just in 2023.
The shuttered web domain, tickmilleas.com, had been used by scammers based at a compound called Tai Chang in the village of Kyaukhat, Myanmar, the FBI reported.
The seizure of the online site occurred less than three weeks after the announcement of the formation of the Scam Center Strike Force and the seizure of two other domains also used by the same criminals, federal officials said.
According to an affidavit filed in the case, Tai Chang is affiliated with the Burmese armed group Democratic Karen Benevolent Army and Trans Asia International Holding Group Thailand Company Limited.
Both entities were designated by the U.S. Department of the Treasury as “specially designated nationals” on Nov. 12 for their alleged links to Chinese organized crime and development of scam centers in Southeast Asia.
According to federal authorities, the tickmilleas.com domain was disguised as a legitimate investment platform to trick people into depositing funds.
According to the affidavit, tickmilleas.com directed users to download mobile applications from Google Play and Apple’s App Store. The FBI notified those firms of the fraudulent apps, and they have voluntarily removed several of them from their stores.
The Scam Center Strike Force also worked with Meta to identify accounts associated with the Tai Chang compound, the FBI reported. Meta voluntarily removed about 2,000 of them as part of the collaborative effort, officials said.
Among the results of the investigation was the FBI’s discovery that Tai Chang was targeting a San Diegan, whom authorities were able to warn about the scheme before the targeted person lost any money, according to federal authorities.