Subcommittee on Border Security and Enforcement Chairman Michael Guest and Subcommittee on Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection Chairman Andy Ogles announced on Apr. 17 a joint hearing to examine the increasing threat of transnational criminal organizations using digital technologies to target Americans. The hearing is scheduled for Tuesday, April 21, at the Cannon House Office Building in Washington, D.C.
The upcoming session will focus on how these organizations exploit cryptocurrency, online platforms, artificial intelligence, and global financial networks to conduct scams, frauds, and other illicit activities against citizens, businesses, and critical infrastructure. Lawmakers say that cyber-enabled financial crimes have become significant sources of revenue for criminal groups. Many schemes are reported to involve forced labor or human trafficking victims alongside traditional organized crime operations.
According to the announcement, cartels—including those recently designated as Foreign Terrorist Organizations—are increasingly working with international financial facilitators linked to China to launder money across borders. The hearing aims to discuss ways to strengthen enforcement efforts against these threats. “Transnational organized crime groups are leveraging digital technologies to operate beyond our physical borders and across our cyber borders. Today’s scammers are highly sophisticated and relentlessly effective, with a long list of tailored schemes they can use to defraud innocent Americans,” Guest said. “We cannot allow these criminal networks to use American dollars to enable their illicit activities––from flooding our communities with deadly, illicit narcotics to engaging in human trafficking. This hearing is about defending the sovereignty of our borders, safeguarding our financial systems, and fulfilling our moral obligation to protect Americans.”
Ogles also commented on the growing role of technology in facilitating criminal activity: “Drug cartels and other international criminal networks are weaponizing AI and other advanced technology to steal Americans’ livelihoods and fund their billion-dollar drug trafficking operations. Too many Americans have been the victims of ransomware attacks, crypto scams, and other digital fraud schemes. The United States must crush these actors,” he said.“Cartels increasingly rely on cryptocurrency and other digital tools to launder money; their operations are intersecting with criminal and financial networks linked to Communist China. I look forward to hearing more from our private-sector witnesses about how we can work together to cut off the financial flows that sustain these criminals’ deadly enterprises.”
The joint hearing will feature testimony from Cynthia Kaiser of Halcyon Ransomware Research Center; Ari Redbord from TRM Labs; Joshua Bercu representing USTelecom — The Broadband Association; and Megan Stifel from Institute for Security and Technology.
Witness testimony will be made available online after the event. The session will be livestreamed via YouTube for public viewing.
