UNODC: Southeast Asia's scam franchise now moves $88B–$114B a year, mostly on-chain 🤝

The United Nations said Tuesday that Southeast Asia's scam industry has consolidated into a single, transnational criminal economy whose yearly losses now rival the gross domestic product of several regional nations. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) described a "fundamental" restructuring of the region's underworld, in which locally rooted syndicates have merged into a service-based network that sells money laundering, fraud, human trafficking and data harvesting to one another over shared infrastructure. UNODC Regional Representative for South-East Asia and the Pacific Delphine Schantz likened the model to "corporate franchising," pointing to specialized departments that plug into the same pipeline.

UNODC estimated combined losses from scam offences across East Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand at $88.3 billion to $114.1 billion in 2025 alone, a figure it said "outstrips the GDP of several countries in the region." A growing share of those proceeds moves through crypto, with compounds running investment- and romance-scam operations—commonly known as "pig butchering"—and laundering the returns on-chain. UNODC warned that police in the region still lack the training to follow the money in "the new crypto context," and Schantz said seizing proceeds is now essential because "disruption alone does not work."

The report documents forced labor on a global scale, with people from at least 80 countries identified inside scam compounds, and said networks are now recruiting individuals with European and North American language skills. UNODC flagged 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 including Starlink, the report added, allowing them to operate from remote locations. Beyond scams, UNODC identified the Sulu and Celebes Seas—between Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines—as a rising smuggling corridor and warned that groups are widening their use of digital and crypto-based financial infrastructure across the region.