80 Indicted in Alleged $46 Million Fraud Scheme

The investigation began in 2016 with a single bank account and one victim, said Paul Delacourt, assistant director in charge of the FBI's Los Angeles office. It grew to encompass victims who were targeted in the U.S. and around the world, some of whom lost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Delacourt urged people to be aware of online scams. “Billions of dollars are lost annually, and we urge citizens to be aware of these sophisticated financial schemes to protect themselves or their businesses from becoming unsuspecting victims. The FBI is committed to working with our partner agencies worldwide to continue to identify these cybercriminals and to dismantle their networks,” he said.

Federal authorities cited the case of a Japanese woman, known only as “F.K.” in court papers, as one example of the alleged romance scams that began through what she assumed was an international social network for digital pen pals.

Over 10 months of daily emails, F.K. thought a romance had blossomed with a U.S. Army captain stationed in Syria who had a plan to smuggle diamonds out of that country. “Capt. Terry Garcia,” however, was a fiction in an elaborate scam that left F.K. $200,000 poorer and on the brink of bankruptcy, the authorities alleged.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.