Southeast Asian Scam Networks Cost Victims Up to $114B in a Year: UN

In brief The UN Office on Drugs and Crime says Southeast Asia's once-fragmented crime syndicates have merged into a single, tech-driven economy built on shared fraud and laundering infrastructure. Scam operations across the wider region drove an estimated $88.3 billion to $114.1 billion in losses in 2025, much of it crypto investment fraud run from industrial-scale compounds. The agency urged regional police to get specialized crypto training to trace and seize proceeds, warning that disruption-focused strategies are not working. Southeast Asia's scam industry has hardened into a single, interconnected criminal economy whose losses now rival the output of entire countries, the United Nations said in a report published Tuesday. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) described a “fundamental” restructuring of the region's underworld. Locally rooted syndicates that once stuck to one territory and one specialty have fused into a transnational network in which groups sell services—money laundering, fraud, human trafficking, data harvesting—to one another over shared infrastructure, the report said. Technology is rapidly reshaping the operational model of transnational organized crimes. Nowhere is this transformation more evident than in South-East Asia. The latest @UNODC threat assessment report shows that cyber scams, synthetic drug production, trafficking in persons,… pic.twitter.com/Jzg7ozFqSA — Monica Juma (@Monica_Juma_) July 21, 2026 Delphine Schantz, UNODC Regional Representative for South-East Asia and the Pacific, likened the model to "corporate franchising," in a statement , pointing to specialized departments for money laundering, human trafficking and data harvesting that plug into the same service-based network. Combined losses from scam offences across East Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand reached an estimated $88.3 billion to $114.1 billion in 2025 alone—a figure that UNODC noted “outstrips the GDP of several countries in the region.” Much of that money moves through crypto: the compounds run investment- and romance-scam operations, often called "pig butchering," whose proceeds are laundered on-chain. UNODC warned that police in the region still lack the training to follow the money in "the new crypto context," with Schantz adding that seizing proceeds is now essential because "disruption alone does not work." Rather than smuggling physical contraband, groups increasingly sell cyber-enabled fraud, criminal infrastructure, and platform-based financial settlements that leave little trace and are hard to attribute. Feeding the machine is forced labor on a global scale, with people from at least 80 countries identified inside scam compounds. Scam networks are now attempting to widen their recruitment pool, the report added, with advertisements targeting individuals with European and North American language skills.  The report flags generative AI, deepfakes, and near-automated fraud, alongside "malvertising"—the hijacking of legitimate ad networks to spread malware—which it said rose 42% year-on-year in 2025. Criminal operations have been “decoupled” from local telecommunications infrastructure by satellite internet such as Elon Musk’s Starlink, the report said, enabling them to operate in remote locations. Beyond scams, the report breaks ground on other fast-growing markets. It identifies the Sulu and Celebes Seas—the maritime triangle between Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines—as a rising smuggling corridor, and it warns that criminals are gamifying online gambling to draw in younger users. UNODC Executive Director Monica Juma said the networks are "flexible, persistent and adaptable," able to shift across borders and resume operations after law-enforcement crackdowns, making international cooperation essential to dismantling them. Law enforcement bodies around the world are escalating their response to the threat. U.S. prosecutors last week seized more than $25 million in crypto tied to investment and romance scams routed through the region, and Interpol has labeled the compound networks a global threat. The human toll is also coming into focus, with Amnesty International documenting a humanitarian crisis as workers flee Cambodia's compounds—the same country where alleged Prince Group boss Chen Zhi was arrested pending extradition to China, in a case that included one of the largest-ever Bitcoin seizures . Daily Debrief Newsletter Start every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more. Your Email Get it! Get it!