Europe Faces Growing Cyberscam Threat, Study Reveals

A landmark study on cyberscams in Europe released this week has found that 75% of adults encountered a scam in the past year.

While 71% of respondents said they were confident in recognizing scams, 8% of those exposed went on to interact with scammers. Some 16% of parents said their children had been approached by a scammer.

Across the European countries surveyed, around €50 billion ($57.7 billion) has been lost to scams in the last 12 months, according to the study by the Global Anti-Scam Alliance (GASA), a nonprofit organization that polled around 22,200 people across 15 European countries.

Of those who interacted with a scam, 22% suffered a financial or data loss, yet only 39% reported the incident to authorities. The average financial loss was $2,735 (€2,369), with the highest average losses recorded in Switzerland, Denmark and Belgium. GASA's report estimated scam losses in Germany were about €10.6 billion over the past 12 months.

Some 35% of those who reported their losses said their money was reimbursed by the organization they reported it to.

"Scam avoidance is largely driven by habitual behaviors, such as ignoring unsolicited messages, rather than intervention," the GASA report noted.

"Half of victims only realize they have been scammed after external intervention or after losing money," it added.

Southeast Asia's scam factories

Although the GASA report did not identify how many European victims were targeted from Southeast Asia, the region has become a major hub for cyberscamming in recent years.

In 2024, the United States Institute of Peace estimated that the cyberscam industry could be worth nearly €11 billion ($12.7 billion) annually in Cambodia, roughly half of the country's formal GDP. Including scammers in Myanmar and Laos, these syndicates may be stealing more than €37.9 billion annually.

In April 2025, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime estimated that the region's industrial-scale scam centers were generating almost €34 billion in annual profits.

The scam industry was not the only factor in the deadly Thailand-Cambodia border crisis that erupted in 2025. However, Bangkok has repeatedly framed scam compounds across the border as a national security threat. Authorities in Thailand have linked border restrictions and supply cutoffs in efforts to disrupt illegal scam centers in Cambodia.

Many of the cyberscam networks in the region appear to be run by Chinese criminal groups, although the growing sums being stolen from Chinese citizens have made crackdowns a priority for Beijing.

China has applied considerable pressure on actors in the Myanmar civil war to act against scam compounds, even as analysts warn that crackdowns often displace rather than dismantle the networks.

Beijing has pressured Cambodia to also deport Chinese-born alleged scammers, including Chen Zhi, to stand trial back at home.

Europe trailing US in anti-scam actions

Washington has gone much further than Brussels to address the issue. Last October, the US Treasury, working with the UK, sanctioned 146 targets linked to the Cambodia-based Prince Group, one of the country's largest conglomerates, which Washington designated as a transnational criminal organization.

The same month, the US Justice Department indicted Prince Group chairman Chen Zhi, a former advisor to Cambodia's prime ministers, over alleged forced-labor scam compounds and filed what it called its largest-ever forfeiture action, involving around $15 billion in bitcoin.

Washington also moved against Cambodia-based Huione Group, another major conglomerate, and has sanctioned senators and tycoons close to the ruling Hun family.

So far, the EU has imposed sanctions on Southeast Asian entities only once over cyberscamming. In October 2024, the Council of the EU sanctioned three individuals linked to Thit Linn Myaing Group in Myanmar for scam operations.

"Compared to the US, China and the UK, Europe has been less visibly engaged on Southeast Asia's scam ecosystem," Brian D. Hanley, GASA's Asia-Pacific director, told DW.

"Regrettably, these networks have been seen as a regional issue, rather than a global security issue," Hanley said.

"Another issue is fragmentation, with competencies split across EU institutions and member states," he added. "But the impact on European citizens is real and growing, and the current level of response doesn't match the scale of the threat."

Is Brussels shifting course?

On April 21, the EU co-organized the ASEAN Regional Seminar on Online Scams Fighting in Bangkok, bringing together officials, law enforcement, regulators, financial authorities, civil society groups and international organizations.

"Cyber-enabled scams are evolving quickly. But our cooperation can move faster," Luisa Ragher, the EU ambassador to Thailand, said at the conference, according to post-event statements.

Days later, at the 25th ASEAN-EU Ministerial Meeting in Brunei, the post-event joint statement referred repeatedly to online scams and scam centers in Southeast Asia.

"We recognized the importance of strengthening cooperation on non-traditional security challenges, including cyber threats, online scams and related crimes, and on countering disinformation and misinformation," it noted.

At the 2026 Global Fraud Summit in Vienna in March, EU Commissioner for Internal Affairs and Migration Magnus Brunner said the European Commission would present an EU action plan against digital fraud before summer 2026.

Many analysts believe this suggests Brussels is beginning to treat online scams not only as consumer fraud, but as organized crime and human trafficking.

Jason Tower, a senior expert at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, told DW that one reason why European countries are perhaps not taking such an active approach to combating the cyberscam problem in Southeast Asia is the lack of information about European victims.

"Increasingly, countries like Germany and France are starting to mobilize more resources into raising public awareness," Tower said.

"One major gap to present, though, is that the EU has not started to use various available tools such as sanctions and strong regulatory actions targeting fintech and social media companies that are exploited by criminals to perpetrate the scams," he added.

The GASA report could help. For Tower, the next step is to connect public awareness with tougher disruption: more victim data, more pressure on platforms and payment systems, and more coordinated national action across Europe.

Looking at experiences in other countries targeted by scams, it is increasingly critical that this national-level response pick up, Tower said.

Edited by: Ole Tangen Jr.