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After nearly three decades of service as a prosecutor, Erin West, the founder of Operation Shamrock, had seen enough of the “scamdemic” and how these crimes shattered people’s lives. Operation Shamrock became her way to fight back through education, victim services, and by mobilizing law enforcement and regulators.
West will bring her passion and firsthand insights to deliver the keynote address titled “Inside the Global Scam Ecosystem: Pig Butchering, Trafficking & Industrialized Fraud” at M3AAWG’s 66th General Meeting, taking place in San Diego, California, from February 16–19, 2026.
West’s keynote exposes how multinational criminal networks function using large-scale human trafficking, forced labor, and sophisticated operational logistics. She highlights the coordinated efforts it will take for systemic shifts to dismantle the organized crime operations.
“In the last three years of my career as a prosecutor, we were inundated with a new scam that took romance scams to a new and frightening level, led by transnational organized criminals draining folks of every penny. Fighting back will require cross-sector collaborations, detailed intelligence sharing, and helping people understand that this is much more than a crypto crime; it’s a societal issue,” she said.
West spent 26 years as a Deputy District Attorney in Santa Clara County, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley, leading investigations of cryptocurrency-enabled crimes, SIM-swapping, and other forms of digital financial fraud.
She has traveled to Southeast Asia to see scam centers in person and has met with human trafficking victims in both Southeast Asia and Uganda who were forced to perpetrate scams on behalf of their captors. She has gained a rare firsthand account of the tragic, far-reaching impacts of these crimes.
“The amount of money being moved and lives wrecked is nearly incomprehensible. Most people do not realize that the workforce enabling these scams is often the result of human trafficking and forced labor. These scams impact every corner of the globe, and my keynote will dive directly into the multilayered approach we need to be aware of to disrupt this industry at its core,” she added.
Operation Shamrock works directly with many people who have had their entire life savings stolen by scammers, helping West and her team gain an intense real-world connection to these crimes.
“With horrific things like multinational crime rings and teen suicide rates of sextortion victims on the rise, Erin’s keynote address will weave together emotional storytelling from her prolific work while delivering practical solutions for fighting back,” said M3AAWG’s Board of Directors Chairperson Sara Roper.
In addition to her work through Operation Shamrock, West is the host of the acclaimed Stolen Podcast, where she leads in-depth conversations with global experts, survivors, law enforcement officials, industry leaders, and investigative journalists. Through these episodes, she unpacks the human, financial, and systemic impacts of organized fraud and scam operations, helping listeners better understand how these crimes operate, and how coordinated, cross-sector action can disrupt them.
M3AAWG members can experience Erin West’s impactful and action-demanding keynote by joining us at our 66th General Meeting in San Diego. If you are not yet an M3AAWG member and would like to learn more, we encourage you to explore membership. Joining M3AAWG connects you with a global community working collaboratively to reduce online abuse at scale. Become part of the solution.
Don’t miss future insights from the global anti-abuse community.
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