Remarks: Donald Trump Holds a Roundtable on Cybercrime - October 21, 2026

Thank you. Thank you very much, everybody. Beautiful place, beautiful everything. And you're gonna -- if you want to walk out that door in a little while, you'll see something quite amazing, actually, quite beautiful. So, this is very important, and I want to thank everybody for being here. The effort to stop cyber crime and cyber fraud has been ongoing for many years, but I think we're closer to it than anyone's ever been.

We're working very hard on it. For years, our nation has faced a growing menace of cyber crime perpetrated by fraudsters, hackers and scammers who try to steal Americans' money, prey on senior citizens, exploit children and young people through fraud, ransomware, impersonization seen -- the -- the schemes that they use for impersonation and other illegal acts.

And it's very, very severe. When you see some of the things that we're finding in Minnesota and California, we have crooked politicians running the places, it really gets bad. Countless American victims have had their life savings, bank accounts, college funds, and more emptied by these thieves. And that's exactly what they are.

And they're often part of a sophisticated criminal syndicate operating scam centers all around the world. Almost three-quarters of American adults have been subjected to internet scams or cyber attacks. It's pretty amazing. Americans reported losing more than $20 billion to cyber enabled crimes, and this is just what's reported.

So, the number would be probably many times that amount. That was just last year alone. The real number would be really, I think, quite a bit higher. Every American who has an aging parent or a young son or daughter has felt the anxiety of knowing that those you love are using internet service overrun by thieves and pirates, predators, and foreign criminals.

Under the Trump administration, we have marshaled the full force of the federal government to combat this scourge. And we have very talented people. We have people that do nothing but this, and they're really good at it. I've seen some examples, amazing actually. In March, I signed an executive order directing every relevant department and agency to work together to combat predatory internet schemes and establish a victims' restoration program to recover as much money for the victims as possible.

I -- I wish we could get it all, but it oftentimes doesn't work that way because they spend it. They spend it before they get it. In August, I signed a historic national security memorandum unleashing the incredible talent, tools and resources of our private sector and companies to undertake offensive and defensive actions to stop the hackers and these horrible people that we talk about, predators, cyber criminals, including industrial scam centers stealing from American families and American businesses.

I want to thank Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, Attorney General Todd Blanche -- these are great people, by the way -- Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin, Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, FBI Director Kash Patel, Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton, National Cyber Director Sean Camon -- where are you, Sean?

Where the hell is you? I got to get this name so perfect -- Cairncross. Is that good? Cairncross. I see you all the time, but I never heard your damn name. [Laughter] Now -- I know him. I know him very simply as Sean. Cairncross, it's a nice name, actually. And many others here on this panel, and it's a great honor to have you on the national campaign to destroy this menace.

Federal law enforcement has been able to warn over 10,000 Americans targeted for victim -- victimization, and we've prevented $1.6 billion in losses, at least, this year. Federal law enforcement has also frozen nearly $1 billion of cyber currency and -- tied to foreign scammers, shut down more than 500 fraudulent websites, and coordinated with technology companies to disrupt millions and millions of online accounts used by foreign criminals.

It sounds so sinister. I guess it is, but it sounds -- you know, as you're looking at this and you're reading what experts have largely written, it sounds so sinister. It's a terrible situation. And we've engaged with international partners to arrest hundreds of foreign scammers of all types, including scam call centers.

Our administration is also aggressively confronting the sexual extortion rackets that have wrecked the lives of too many young people and, in some cases, even tragically led victims to take their own lives, commit suicide. This has been a top priority for our wonderful first lady, who led a successful bipartisan effort to pass the Take It Down Act, a big deal.

And it went almost, I think, unanimously through Congress. We are very bipartisan. Melania's continued leadership has been vital to helping us protect America's children and women from online exploitation. To any American who might find themselves a victim of online fraud, extortion scams, especially young people and our great seniors -- and we want to protect our seniors because the seniors, almost more than anybody, are really victims of what we're talking about today -- I want you to know that the Trump administration is here to support you and will bring the perpetrators to justice.

We will do it quickly, as quickly as anybody can believe. And if you think you may be a victim, seek out help from trusted family members. And oftentimes, they're going to know exactly where to go, but you start heading for law enforcement. So, we will work tirelessly to help recover what has been stolen and dismantle the criminal networks that prey on our people.

And now I'd like to ask a man who's done an incredible job. Attorney General Todd Blanche. to say a few words. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much, Mr. President, I appreciate that. Thank you for convening this discussion today and for the attention that you've given this issue, which has affected, as you just said, far too many American families. I also want to recognize our US attorney from DC, Jeanine Pirro, who's here, and our chief of our criminal division, Tysen Duva, who's here.

Both of them have done a tremendous amount of work delivering justice for cybercrime victims. So, thank you both for your work. At the Department of Justice, we are implementing your series, Mr. President, of Executive Actions aimed at combating transnational criminal organizations that, for far too long, have targeted the most vulnerable among us with ransomware, malware, phishing, financial fraud and deplorable extortion schemes.

As you just mentioned, Mr. President, your March Executive Order directed us at the Department of Justice to work with DHS, Treasury, State and the Department of War to build out a single plan to dismantle organizations behind scam centers' predatory fraud and extortion. And in your August National Security Memorandum, you directed the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security to jointly oversee vetted American companies taking cyber operations against these criminal networks.

Through the Homeland Security Task Force and the new Scam Center Cell in the National Coordination Center, our prosecutors are working alongside FBI and HSI agents, the Secret Service, Treasury and State on the same targets, so that every case is built to take down not just one scammer, but the whole network.

And because of the magnitude of this issue, it demands a nationwide response. We have evolved from delegating these cases to single US Attorney's offices to leveraging our newly established cyber-enabled scam initiative, which is led by our criminal division at the Department of Justice and deploys dozens of prosecutors across all 94 US Attorney's offices to continue driving prosecutions and helping victims.

Mr. President, thanks to your leadership and our partners here today, this coordinated response is working. There are private companies helping as well. Meta has been an incredible partner to law enforcement, as has X and Elon Musk. In April, FBI and the Dubai Police announced the arrest of at least 276 individuals and the dismantlement of at least nine scam centers that targeted Americans who suffered millions and millions of dollars in losses.

At the same time, our prosecutors unsealed charges against their managers and their recruiters and, in a similar operation just last month, we seized Xinbi Criminal Marketplace and restrained $52 million on the same day that Treasury sanctioned it. Scam centers like these are the ones sending your grandmother fraudulent links.

They're the ones emailing your mom with fake emergencies that don't really exist. And they're the ones impersonating law enforcement officers on the phone with fictitious arrests. But we are stopping them. Together prosecutors and agents across government have restrained nearly $1 billion stolen from Americans.

We're also meeting the serious threat of sextortion head on. I'll say Mr. President, there is no corner of government from which these predators can hide. Arrests at HSI -- agents at HSI and FBI are identifying them, the State Department is denying them visas, and our prosecutors are charging them. We are increasing our effort to block funds that unsuspecting victims send to fraudsters.

And thanks to our partnerships, and we do have partnerships with the financial industry, we have protected Americans from losing millions of dollars. Mr. President, while we still have a lot of work to do, our strategy to combat cybercrime is delivering for the American people, and that's because of your leadership and the commitment of the people in this room and at this table, to my left and right, to protecting the financial security of every single American.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you very much and great job. Thank you very much, Todd. And Markwayne, please.

Thank you, Mr. President, for giving us the opportunity to go after these bad actors. Mr. President, DHS is leading the way by serving as a co-lead on the Homeland Security Task Force, working with federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies across the country, and fight to dismantle the cyber syndicates and secure our communities.

Most critically, we are protecting our families through what is known as Know2Protect. HSI -- which the director of HSI is with us, Tony Salisbury, who does a wonderful job on leading. HSI, the Cyber Crime Center, we are educating families on how to protect themselves from digital extortion. Since just March of this year, Know2Protect has made over 5,500 media impressions, which has led to over 600,000 websites and over 13,000 online leads to report on online abuse.

Behind every statistic is a human life and a campaign that has led to actionable results under, Mr. President, your leadership. We are working with countries around the world to arrest criminals. I want to brag just a second also on Secret Service. Secret Service is known for protecting you and many of us along the way.

But what they don't realize is what else they also do. Underneath their Internet Crimes Against Children, which is called ICAC, just Secret Service -- that doesn't include CISA, that doesn't -- which we got our Acting Director Nick here to appreciate it and our Deputy Secretary Troy Edgar who is in this fight every single day leading the charge for DHS.

Underneath the Secret Service alone, they have recovered 14,600 child abuse videos, as the first lady has so eloquently said, take it down, and over 35,600 images. That's just Secret Service alone. When you get into to what is going on, elderlies -- the elderly population over 60 has, just in 2025 through cybercrimes, lost $7.7 billion in their income.

That's retirements that are completely wiped away. And because, Mr. President, you have made this a staple part of your administration, your Executive Order has given us a clear mission to confront the criminals that are taking advantage of Americans every single day. We're disrupting their network, we're enabling -- we're taking away the networks that enable them to work.

And DHS, Department of Homeland Security, will continue to do just that. I believe now I'm turning it to Secretary Hegseth. Mr. President, thank you for your leadership.

Thank you.

Well, Mr. President, thank you. I'm just struck sitting here yet again, you're taking the lead on real issues that affect real people that have been ignored for far too long, and using the entirety of the government to attack that problem. And that's why we're proud to be here with the chief, with Kash, with Todd, with Markwayne, with Stephen, with Sean, and everybody at this table who's working shoulder to shoulder to address this.

I mean, at the War Department, we've done the same on the southwest border with our interagency partners on law enforcement in cities all across America in mass deportations of illegals who we're proud to have the assets to be able to support that directly, and now with CYBERCOM and NSA and the exquisite capabilities that the War Department has.

So, in March, when you issued that executive order, Mr. President, we immediately started working with the Justice Department and Homeland Security and Treasury and State to get after transnational criminal organizations, because your directive is clear that attacks on our people or our infrastructure will be met with decisive action.

And the War Department has the kind of specialized intelligence and technical capabilities that we can use to directly support the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security. So, we're feeding our deep intelligence and tracking data on overseas cyber networks directly to the National Coordination Center and Homeland Security Task Force.

And this ensures that law enforcement has what it needs, as we do so well at the Department of War, to map, disrupt, and dismantle these criminal enterprises and criminal networks. Because we've also seen there's a very clear connection between transnational cyber syndicates and enemy militaries in how they fund themselves, how they support their activities.

So, if they can't match us or beat us on the battlefield, which they can't, then of course they try to move to the realm of cyberspace to attack. And by taking on these cyber criminals on offense and defense, we watch out for our warriors, we watch out for American citizens, and we secure the homeland. So, we're proud to be a part of -- work with the Homeland Security Task Force and get after this problem set, Mr. President.

Thank you.

Thank you very much. Stephen.

Thank you, Mr. President. This is another example of you solving a problem that has gone on for decades that nobody else had the vision, courage, team, leadership to solve before. Everybody knows the stories; it's affected almost every family in America.

Your grandmother, your grandfather, your parents, they get a phone call saying a loved one, who's been arrested, wired $10,000 right away to get them out of jail, except nobody was arrested, nobody is in jail, and the money goes to a foreign scam center. And then that -- that pension, that retirement account that senior citizen has saved for their entire lives is gone.

And then you have senior citizens, who are going to be living their golden years, are now living in poverty. And for years and years and years, this went unmet and unanswered. With the executive order that you signed, for the first time ever, we are using offensive cyber capabilities to dismantle, disrupt, and disable these foreign scam centers.

That has never been done before. And then we're working with foreign governments and the Department of Justice to bring these individuals into our prison system to face real jail time here in the United States for their crimes against the American people. So, you have effectively declared cyber warfare against the cyber criminals, and that is saving the pensions, the life savings, the retirement accounts, the earnings of countless American citizens, not to mention protecting people from sextortion, from child trafficking, from human trafficking.

So, we've talked so much, Mr. President, about how you've brought crime to record lows, violent crime to record lows, the murder rate to the lowest in 125 years, but now you're bringing cybercrime to the lowest level since this has existed as an industry. It's just one more example of how you have put the American people first.

You've put the American people's safety first. I'll make one more point on this. There's a common theme in all of the challenges that you have systemically tackled and solved, whether it's the trade deficit, where we were getting ripped off by foreign countries, whether it's welfare fraud, where we're getting ripped off by these refugees and foreign scammers, or cybercrime, where you have entire foreign economies that are propped up on stealing from American seniors.

What you're saying is America is not a pile of treasure for other countries and other people and other scammers all around the world to loot for themselves. You're protecting American wealth for American people and American families in a way no leader has ever done before. And thank you sir.

Thank you very much, Steve. Appreciate it. Kash, please.

Thank you, Mr. President. And first and foremost, thank you for your leadership here. As Stephen said, this problem has existed for decades, but no president in the history of the United States put pen to paper and put -- put this team together and gave us these authorities to go after these cyber criminals around the world.

The FBI is leading out through Operation Blackout under President Trump's initiative here. And what does that mean for scam centers around the world? Scam centers, for the American public and the world, are literally towns and ecosystems with trafficked victims, with cities and housing, that they've built an empire for criminal syndicates to fleece American citizens.

They're in Southeast Asia. They're in Africa. They're in the Middle East. And the FBI's Operation Blackout, with our interagency partners, has gone to each one of these separate continents and dismantled and destroyed and demolished over 20 compounds. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, along with our partners at DOJ and the United States Attorney's offices, have seized over $17 billion from these scam compound fraud centers, seized it. That means that's money we got back.

We're going to use it with our DOJ partners to prosecute these individuals, and then get that money back to the American people from which it was stolen. That is us going on offense to annihilate these scam centers through FBI's Operation Blackout. And it's also putting everyone on notice. They thought they could get away with it in Southeast Asia and the cross border regions.

Because of your relationships with the leaders of those countries, we were able to work there with immediacy and efficacy. They moved to Africa. We got them there, too. Just two weeks ago, we were in Ghana and Nigeria, and we arrested another 300 individuals and seized another $15 million being fleeced from American senior citizens through these scam center operations.

And just the other week, we partnered with our UK forces in England to have a disruption week to further work with the private sector. And again, because of your relationships with these private sector companies in America, Meta, Google, Microsoft, IBM and so forth, they have immediately come to the table and shut down internet trafficking and domain networks across the cyber security space that participate in this global scam center enterprise.

So, the whole of government effort you're seeing here under President Trump's leadership, with everyone up here and everyone here in the front row, and the private sector has never, ever happened before because there's never been a president who has brought us together like President Trump has We are going to continue to go on offense, Mr. President.

And lastly on our Operation Blackout, we are not waiting for the scammers to hit our citizens. We are going out there in full force. Mr. President, to date, your administration has prevented 11,000 Americans from being fleeced of $675 million. That means they were not scammed. We went out to them through our interagency partners and our relationships and we said we think you are being scammed, and we shut it down before it even happened.

So, to the American public that's listening, we have an internet crime complaint center at the FBI, 1-800-CALL-FBI. Let us know. No piece of information is too small. Every piece of information you give us allows us to cripple this global criminal syndicate and destroy and demolish global scams center operations.

And the FBI's Operation Blackout is a small part of it. Mr. President, we thank you for your leadership.

Well, thank you very much. And thank you to everybody. It's been an amazing period of time in so many different ways, but this is one of them. This is one of the -- I would say it's a very negative thing, but what we're doing is very positive. And we'll put a dent, a very big dent, hopefully, in what's been taking place for really many decades.

And it's gone totally unchecked. It should have been -- this should have -- they should have had this meeting 30 years ago, 20 years ago. They should have had it a long time ago. So, the team here and a lot of the audience, most of the audience, I would say, are the top people in the business, and they are fantastic people.

Do you have a couple of questions, please, anybody? Oh, they have no questions. Good. I'll -- [Laughter]

Can you tell us about the Russian prisoner release? The Russian prisoner release?

Yeah. Sure, sure. We had a wonderful man who, during the Biden administration, was taken hostage in Russia. They claimed things -- we won't get into that, but we thought he was a very high quality, innocent man. And Stephen Hubbard his name is. And he was -- for the last number of years, I would hear the name mostly when it happened.

When -- when it happened, I would watch his son on television. I'd watch his family on television begging, virtually, to -- for him to come back, please. And the other day I was talking with -- I -- I set the the stage earlier. But the other day I was talking to Vladimir Putin about settling his war with Ukraine, which I think we're getting closer to, by the way, maybe now the closest we've been.

But I mentioned could you let Stephen Hubbard out, please? And he agreed to do it. So, he was met today in Russia and he's on his way back. He's on a flight. Steve Witkoff is with him. His family is with him. His family went over to meet him. And so, we thank everybody involved. This was an amazing thing.

They didn't think he'd come out for 20, 25 years, so we appreciate the fact that we were able to get him. We -- we gave nothing in exchange, which is very rare. We never give anything in exchange we have. And we've taken -- we've gotten out hundreds of hostages. We don't give -- once you give, you -- you'll end up quadrupling the problem.

The past administration gave massive amounts of money and other things. You can't do that. And when you do that, the problem is -- is greatly exacerbated. So, he'll be landing soon, relatively soon, and I hear he's in pretty good shape. He went through a lot. I spoke to him this morning. He is the happiest man around.

He didn't think this was going to be -- this was very surprising to him, but I -- I did it. It really took place on a phone call at the end of last week with President Putin. So, we appreciate it very much. And his family is extremely happy. They can't believe it because it happened so quickly. So, that's the kind of things we do. Any other questions, please?

[Crosstalk]

Go ahead.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President, do you -- Mr. President, [Inaudible] your son to stop --

You have to -- you can't both speak.

Thank you, Mr. President. Following up on that question, while Mr. Witkoff was in Saint Petersburg, he described President Putin as a humanitarian. Would you describe him in that same way?

You mean Steve Witkoff said he was a humanitarian?

Yes.

Well, I guess you have -- could say for that particular purpose, for the purpose of allowing a man who was thinking he was going to be in prison for life out. But, you know, I -- I wouldn't say anything one way or the other. You know, we're negotiating with Russia to stop the war with Ukraine. And we have been pretty happy with Russia, that they have not gotten involved with Iran.

We've -- we've taken Iran down to levels that they've never seen before. They're very low. Their military's completely gone, their anti-aircraft. Just about everything is gone, including their economy. The only thing not gone is inflation. They have 301 percent as of this morning. The -- their money is gone.

Everything's gone. So -- and frankly, their leaders are gone. The first set of leaders are gone, the second set of leaders are gone, parts of the third set of leaders are gone. And I would say that a very important element is the fact that Russia and China have not participated or participated in a much smaller way than they could have.

So, I am very happy about that. So, the last thing I want to do is upset an apple cart where we're getting close to settling a war. The last thing you're going to do is let's do something horrendous. So, let's say we did what a lot of stupid people wanted me to do, a lot of really stupid people. I took a lot of heat.

Oh, why don't you do this? They didn't even know what it was. They didn't even know what it was. All they said is, oh, I think you should do it. Oh, do you know what he's supposed to do? No, we don't really know, it's just some -- one guy, one politician on television said we don't know exactly, something.

Well, I was in the midst of getting Stephen out of Russia and if we did what these foolish people wanted me to do, he wouldn't be coming out right now, he'd be in there for another 20 years. So, the last thing I was going to do was break up that. Also, and whether people like it or not, Russia could have participated much more strongly with Iran and, likewise, China.

As you know, President Xi was here a week ago, likewise, China could have participated a lot more. There's relatively little participation. The fact is, both of them would like to see the war settled. So, we're in the process of doing that with Russia and we have China also that's involved. Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you.