Southeast Asia scammers stole up to US$37 billion in 2023; Singapore ‘tip of the iceberg’: UN

Cybercrime syndicates raked in as much as US$37 billion last year and are intensifying operations across Southeast Asia despite mounting law enforcement efforts, the United Nations said.

“The transnational organised crime threat landscape in Southeast Asia is evolving faster than in any previous point in history,” according to a report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

Illegal cyber activity has ballooned since the pandemic with nations of the Mekong region – Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos – becoming a hotbed for crime syndicates to set up operations that carry out romance-investment schemes, crypto fraud, money laundering and illegal gambling.

With the industry proving highly lucrative, those groups are now integrating new service-based business models and technologies, the UN report says. They include the use of malware, generative AI, and deepfakes into their operations while opening up new underground markets and cryptocurrency solutions for their money laundering needs.

“The sheer scale of proceeds being generated within the region’s booming illicit economy has required the professionalisation and innovation of money laundering activities, and transnational criminal groups in Southeast Asia have emerged as global market leaders,” the report says.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been trafficked into those countries by criminal enterprises and forced to work in so-called scam centres with casinos, hotels and special economic zones among the property developments that have “become hubs for the booming illicit economy, adding to existing governance challenges in many of the region’s border areas.”