Southeast Asia's Scam Industry Becomes Interconnected Criminal Economy, UN Report Says

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 (UNODOC) 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.

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.