Southeast Asia’s scam networks stole an estimated $88.3 billion to $114.1 billion from victims worldwide in 2025, according to a new United Nations report. That is more money than the annual economic output of several countries in the region.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, known as UNODC, has now published versions of this same warning three times since 2023. Each time, the number got bigger. Each time, the raids meant to shrink the problem mostly just moved it somewhere harder to see.
UN Tallies a Record $114 Billion Year for Scam Syndicates
UNODC released its newest assessment in Bangkok on July 21, and it put combined 2025 scam losses at $88.3 billion to $114.1 billion across East Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand. Even the low end tops the entire GDP of several countries in the region.
The report carries a formal title, “An Interconnected Criminal Ecosystem: Transnational Organized Crime Threat Assessment for Southeast Asia 2026.” Its central finding is straightforward: syndicates that used to specialize in one crime, in one country, now run several rackets at once through shared back-end infrastructure.
“Their operating model looks like corporate franchising,” said Delphine Schantz, UNODC’s regional representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, describing groups that once stayed within their own territory and specialty and now share the same financial and technical services.
Criminals are moving away from trafficking physical goods and toward selling services, digital fraud infrastructure and platform-based financial settlements. Those leave less of a trail and are harder for police to seize or trace back to one person.
Three Reports, One Repeating Warning
UNODC has flagged this same trend before, in report after report since 2023. Every time, the estimate grew.
“Operations against syndicates in some countries like the Philippines have caused a partial displacement, and we have seen criminals moving infrastructure into places where they see opportunity,” said Jeremy Douglas, then UNODC’s regional representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, in September 2023. He was describing a shift into remote, hard-to-reach border areas of the Mekong, a point made at a coordination meeting UNODC held with regional law enforcement and financial intelligence officials.
| Report | Published | Key Figure | Warning |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coordination meeting readout | September 2023 | $7.5 billion to $12.5 billion from one Mekong nation’s scam industry alone, about half that country’s GDP | Displacement from Philippines crackdowns pushing groups into remote Mekong border areas |
| “A Shifting Threat Landscape” | October 2024 | $18 billion to $37 billion in 2023 scam losses across East and Southeast Asia | Crime evolving “faster than in any previous point in history” |
| “Inflection Point” | April 2025 | Nearly $40 billion in annual profit from hundreds of industrial-scale scam centers | Groups adopting a “hedging strategy,” expanding beyond Southeast Asia |
| “An Interconnected Criminal Ecosystem” | July 2026 | $88.3 billion to $114.1 billion in 2025 scam losses | Syndicates running “corporate franchising” across multiple illicit markets at once |
Line up the first full regional estimate against the newest one and the growth is stark. UNODC put 2023 scam losses at $18 billion to $37 billion. Two years later that range had grown to $88.3 billion to $114.1 billion, nearly five times higher at the low end and more than triple at the high end, even as governments across the region intensified raids.
Raided in Myanmar, Reopened in a Cambodian Villa
The newest report describes the same cycle playing out again, closer to real time. Authorities in Thailand, China and elsewhere have raided industrial-sized scam centers concentrated in the border regions of Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia. Criminals responded by shifting to other parts of the world, or shrinking their footprint to stay hidden.
They were destroyed, but none of the operations stopped.
Seong Jae Shin, a UNODC analyst in its counter-terrorism office, made that comment. He said scam centers have moved into villas and other ordinary properties, going underground rather than shutting down. “It’s much harder for the Cambodian authorities to crack down now,” he said.
Jurist, a legal news outlet that covered the report’s release, named Poipet and Sihanoukville as two of the specific sites now absorbing relocated operations, both long-standing hubs of Cambodia’s cross-border gambling and scam economy.
The Technology Stack Behind the Fraud
The report describes a shared “criminal service infrastructure,” a set of tools that let scam networks operate across borders and languages at industrial scale.
- Cryptocurrency and underground banking – moves criminal proceeds through global financial systems in ways that leave few traces for investigators to follow.
- Encrypted, private communication platforms – coordinate scam operations and, the report found, carry a growing volume of AI-generated child sexual abuse material.
- Generative AI and real-time deepfakes – produce convincing phishing content along with deepfake video and voice calls that impersonate trusted contacts.
- AI-powered translation – lets one scam script target victims in many languages at once, without hiring native speakers for each.
- Satellite communications – keep compounds online in remote areas or spots under close watch; Starlink terminals have turned up at raided sites, including the KK Park compound in Myanmar’s Karen State.
Layered together, those tools let a small team run scam operations once impossible without hundreds of workers on the phones, and let them relocate fast whenever investigators close in.
Children Face a Second, Quieter Threat
Alongside the financial fraud, the report describes a darker side effect of the same technology stack: growing risk to children, both from AI tools and from online gaming and gambling platforms.
- AI-generated child sexual abuse material has jumped sharply and circulates through encrypted communications platforms, according to Inshik Sim, a UNODC researcher who coordinated the report, speaking at a briefing at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand.
- East Asian crime syndicates are running businesses built on malware, generative AI and deepfakes for sexual extortion, a trend the report links to higher risk of in-person abuse, livestreamed abuse and grooming.
- Hundreds of scam compounds scattered across Southeast Asia double as venues for sex trafficking and the production of child sexual abuse content, separate from the financial fraud carried out at the same sites.
- Hundreds of children and teens across Southeast Asia are engaged in online gambling, according to surveys cited in the report, with some showing signs of addiction.
Victims of the broader trafficking operations are not always funneled into scams. The report says some are sold into domestic servitude, forced begging and forced labor.
Cocaine, Cannabis and Wildlife Move Through the Same Pipes
Scam compounds are only part of the picture. The report estimates combined annual sales of illicit drugs in Southeast Asia and nearby countries at up to $109 billion, covering methamphetamine, heroin and ketamine, with seizures of illegal shipments climbing sharply.
One corridor draws particular attention: the Sulu-Celebes maritime triangle between Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. The report calls it an increasingly important route for cocaine shipped from Latin America to Asia, sometimes hidden inside legitimate cargo such as Chinese tea. The same waters are also used to smuggle wildlife and small arms, it says.
Thailand and Vietnam, meanwhile, are increasingly the source of cannabis shipped to Japan, where it remains illegal, and to Europe. Earlier this year, authorities in Malaysia’s Sabah state seized more than 3 tons of methamphetamine, ketamine and ecstasy, the largest such seizure on record for the state.
Why Do the Crackdowns Keep Falling Short?
Raids dismantle buildings, not business models. Southeast Asia’s scam operations run on cross-border finance, encrypted platforms and cloud-based AI tools that keep working even after a physical compound is shut down. Networks simply rebuild smaller and quieter, often in the same country.
UNODC’s April 2025 assessment had already described a hedging strategy behind the groups’ expansion beyond Southeast Asia, spreading operations wider in case crackdown pressure kept building at home. It did, and the networks had already hedged against it.
Corruption feeds the same cycle. Earlier UNODC assessments documented organized crime networks embedding themselves inside casino compounds, special economic zones and border areas specifically to operate beyond the reach of national authorities. The newest report finds that dynamic fully intact, just spread across more countries and currencies than before.
“The scale and complexity of this expanding organized crime economy are outpacing existing responses, which were not structured to address such sophisticated criminal activity,” said Inshik Sim, the UNODC researcher who coordinated the report. Its recommendation is a coordinated, cross-border strategy that integrates enforcement across data, communications, financial systems and online marketplaces, rather than raids aimed at one compound at a time.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Is UNODC?
UNODC, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, is the U.N. agency that tracks organized crime, drug trafficking and related threats worldwide. This report came out of its regional office in Bangkok, which covers Southeast Asia and the Pacific.
What Is a Pig Butchering Scam?
Pig butchering is the industry term for a romance or investment scam in which a fraudster spends weeks or months building trust with a victim before steering them into a fake trading platform. Analysts have linked much of Southeast Asia’s scam-compound activity to this style of fraud, run at industrial scale by trafficked workers.
How Many Countries Are Linked to Southeast Asia’s Scam Compounds?
UNODC has identified people from at least 80 countries and territories working inside Southeast Asia’s scam compounds, recruited through transit hubs across Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Recent recruitment ads tied to the industry have specifically targeted German, Polish, Dutch, Spanish and Italian speakers.
What Is the US-Led Scam Center Strike Force?
It is a multinational law enforcement effort, reported by legal news outlet Jurist, that has targeted fortified scam compounds in Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos alongside bilateral security talks between countries such as Thailand and China. UNODC’s own findings suggest those operations have pushed criminal groups into smaller sites rather than shutting them down.
