Southeast Asia scam losses reach $114.1B: UNODC report

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A report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said that Southeast Asia’s scam industry has turned into an “interconnected criminal ecosystem,” of which losses are built from fraud and money laundering infrastructure.

The UNODC—an international agency against illicit drugs, international crime, and terrorism—recently published a report titled “An Interconnected Criminal Ecosystem: Transnational Organized Crime Threat Assessment for South-East Asia,” revealing how criminals in Southeast Asia are similar to “corporate franchising.”

“What we are seeing is a shift in which groups that stayed within their own geographic domain and criminal specialty are now operating across multiple illicit markets at once, relying on the same service streams,” said Delphine Schantz, UNODC Regional Representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific. “Their operating model looks like corporate franchising: imagine specialized departments for laundering money, trafficking people, smuggling migrants, and harvesting data, all plugged into the same, service-based interconnected network.”

The UNODC said that combined losses from scam offenses in East Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand have reached from $88.3 billion to $114.1 billion in 2025, a figure which the agency claimed: “outstrips the GDP of several countries in the region.”

“The growth we are seeing has fueled an entire ecosystem of ancillary services, many of them operating under the appearance of legitimate commercial activity,” UNODC lead analyst Inshik Sim stated.

A significant share of the illicit proceeds moves through crypto as criminal groups operate investment and romance fraud schemes (also known as pig butchering) and use blockchain networks to launder stolen assets. According to the UNODC, the law enforcement agencies across the region still lack the training needed to trace illicit financial activities involving digital assets. Schantz said confiscating criminal proceeds must be prioritized since “disruption alone does not work.”

“We have to address all the drivers, including prevention and following the money. Seizing criminal proceeds hits these networks where it hurts, and makes potential victims more cautious. To follow the money, in the new crypto context, law enforcement in the region is in need of specialized training to identify, seize and recover these funds,” she added.

Illicit groups are also increasingly dealing with cyber-enabled fraud, criminal infrastructure, and platform-based financial settlements that are difficult to trace. The scam operations rely on forced labor from around the world, with at least 80 countries and territories identified inside the compounds. The UNODC report said criminal networks are also expanding their recruitment efforts, with false promotions targeting people with European and North American language skills via deceptive job advertisements.

The report also flags that generative AI through deepfakes, automation, and “malvertising” or the hijack of legitimate advertisement networks to spread malware, rose by 42% year-on-year in 2025. The UNODC said criminal groups have become less dependent on local telecommunication networks because of satellite internet services such as Elon Musk’s Starlink, which enables scam operations to function from remote and hard-to-reach locations.

Besides the scams, the report also identified the Sulu and Celebes Seas—the maritime triangle between Southeast Asian countries Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines— “has emerged as an increasingly important smuggling corridor for transnational organized groups.”

Global authorities tighten screws on digital asset scams

Authorities around the globe have become stricter in handling digital currency scams. Just last week, the U.K.’s Independent Review of Disclosure and Fraud Offences has warned that fraud has “grown exponentially in the last 20 years” and recommended that judges and magistrates be trained to handle increasing cases involving digital assets and AI.

The review was chaired by Jonathan Fisher KC and was launched in October 2025. It examines the growing challenges of investigating and prosecuting scams in the digital era. Building on its March report, “Disclosure in the Digital Ages,” the latest findings focus on the barriers law enforcement faces in tackling fraud targeting businesses and individuals as technologies reshape criminal activity. The report said that modern fraud has evolved beyond simple acts of deception, becoming more complex due to the use of AI, digital currency, and cross-border fund movement.

Meanwhile, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) issued a scam alert warning that scammers are targeting victims via social media and messaging apps to persuade them to invest in fraudulent digital asset schemes.

“ASIC is warning consumers who have joined ‘share trading’ or ‘stock tips’ messaging app groups that scammers are using these forums to push investments on fake crypto-asset trading platforms,” said the regulator. “These fake platforms show profits and trades, but in fact, there is no real trading, and the site contains fake data. Any money deposited into these platforms goes straight to the scammers.”

Watch: Solving cyber crimes