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Scam networks defrauded people across the Asia-Pacific region of between $88 billion and $114 billion in 2025, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said in a report released Tuesday, roughly triple its estimate from two years earlier.
The finding comes as Cambodia pushes a nationwide crackdown on the networks that have made it a hub for the industry.
Southeast Asia remains the global epicenter for large-scale scam operations, run mostly by Chinese-origin syndicates that rely on trafficked foreign labor and are outpacing crackdowns, diversifying revenue streams, exploiting corruption and harnessing artificial intelligence, UNODC said in the report.
East Asia accounted for about 71% of those scam losses in 2025, followed by Australia and New Zealand at 15.8% to 20.2% and Southeast Asia at 8.4% to 13.2%.
The office said the report was developed from 2025 to mid-2026 through consultations with ASEAN member states, national authorities and international partners, drawing on official data, criminal case records, financial intelligence and field research across Southeast Asia.
UNODC Regional Representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific Delphine Schantz said scam networks are increasingly expanding across multiple illegal markets while using shared services.
“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,” she said Tuesday at the report’s launch in Bangkok.
These networks are increasingly using encrypted messaging platforms, cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence and satellite internet to expand their operations while avoiding law enforcement, according to UNODC.
“The growth we are seeing has fueled an entire ecosystem of ancillary services, many of them operating under the appearance of legitimate commercial activity,” said UNODC lead analyst Inshik Sim. “The scale and complexity of this expanding organized crime economy are outpacing existing responses, which were not structured to address such sophisticated criminal activity.”
Despite intensified regional crackdowns, enforcement efforts have largely displaced rather than dismantled the networks, UNODC said. It said syndicates engage in “jurisdiction shopping” to find places with weak governance and regulation, and that corruption was the “primary enabler” of tech-driven organized crime in the region.
The record estimates come despite Cambodia’s most significant crackdown yet on scam operators over the past year, during which authorities said they shuttered hundreds of compounds and deported tens of thousands of foreign scam workers. The government has faced criticism for failing to protect trafficking victims found in compounds after raids and for not prosecuting local elites connected to the industry.
Interior Ministry spokesperson Touch Sokhak did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The illicit industry has become a sensitive issue in Cambodia amid mounting international pressure. Prime Minister Hun Manet has said the industry has damaged the country’s reputation and economy. Cambodians themselves lost around $45 million to online scams last year, according to the government.
The United States, which said its citizens lost at least $10 billion to scammers in Southeast Asia in 2024, has focused on combating the industry by targeting Cambodian politicians and business figures with sanctions. Its ambassador nominee said last week that dismantling transnational online scam centers would be one of his top priorities in the post.
Hun Manet also met with FBI Director Kash Patel on Wednesday in Phnom Penh, part of Patel’s regional tour to expand security cooperation and coordinate on online fraud networks.
