The UN Office on Drugs and Crime says transnational scam networks are outpacing law enforcement by exploiting corruption, trafficking labour and adopting AI.
BANGKOK, Thailand — Web Desk: Scam gangs defrauded Asia-Pacific residents of at least $88 billion in 2025, a United Nations office said, as transnational crime groups rapidly evolve their tactics to stay ahead of law enforcement.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said in a new report that criminals in Southeast Asia, an epicentre for cyberfraud run mostly by Chinese-origin syndicates, are outpacing crackdowns, diversifying revenue streams, exploiting corruption and harnessing artificial intelligence.
The report estimated scam losses across East Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand at between $88.3 billion and $114.1 billion for 2025 — a figure larger than the GDP of several nations in the region.
Scam centres in Southeast Asia run illegal online schemes that defraud people worldwide, generating billions of dollars in annual revenue. Many facilities are staffed by trafficked foreign nationals held in oppressive conditions, the report said.
According to UNODC, people from at least 80 countries and territories have been identified in scam compounds across the region, with recruitment networks using transit hubs in Asia, the Middle East and Africa.
Delphine Schantz, UNODC Regional Representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, said networks that once operated within specific territories or illicit trades are increasingly expanding across multiple illegal markets while using shared services.
“Their operating model looks like corporate franchising: imagine specialised departments for laundering money, trafficking people, smuggling migrants, and harvesting data, all plugged into the same, service-based interconnected network,” she said.
Inshik Sim, a lead analyst at UNODC, said the scale and complexity of the expanding organised crime economy are outpacing existing responses, which were not structured to address such sophisticated criminal activity.
Scam operators are increasingly seeking recruits from outside Asia as they expand into new markets, UNODC said. Recruitment advertisements linked to the industry’s communication channels have targeted people with German, Polish, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, French, Swedish, Norwegian and English language skills.
Recent pressure from law enforcement in the region has displaced but not dismantled operations, the report said, with gangs relocating from countries such as Myanmar and Laos to East Timor, Pacific Island states, and parts of Africa.
Syndicates engage in what the report calls “jurisdiction shopping” to find places with weak governance and regulation, adding that corruption was the “primary enabler” of tech-driven organised crime in the region.
Beyond using generative AI to create content, criminal groups are expected to adopt agentic AI systems to more autonomously identify victims, conduct social-engineering campaigns, and facilitate cryptocurrency theft and laundering, the report said.
The scam sector’s rapid growth has fuelled an ecosystem of ancillary criminal services, including money laundering, underground banking and data trading, according to UNODC.
UNODC’s findings suggest that without stronger, coordinated regional responses, scam networks will likely continue expanding into new jurisdictions and adopting more advanced technology to evade detection.
