From fake job offers to cryptocurrency fraud and online romance scams, Southeast Asia has become a global hub for transnational scam operations.
These aren’t isolated crimes, they are organised, cross-border and industrial-scale criminal enterprises that exploit vulnerable people and expose the limits of international law enforcement.
New research shows this surge in scams represents more than just a regional issue. It’s a transnational emergency, and it demands an urgent, coordinated response.
Why Southeast Asia?
Several factors have turned Southeast Asia into a hotbed for scam syndicates.
The collapse of rule of law in parts of Myanmar has created ungoverned spaces where criminal operations flourish.
Meanwhile, countries like Cambodia, Laos and the Philippines offer a fertile environment for transnational crime due to weak governance, corruption, and limited oversight.
These scam centres don’t just target foreign victims. They also lure and trap workers—many of them young people from poorer nations—under the false promise of legitimate employment. Once inside, many are subjected to forced labour, abuse and trafficking.
This has become a humanitarian crisis as scam compounds across Southeast Asia have held thousands of people against their will, forcing them to commit fraud under threat of violence.
The rise of digital technologies has only made these operations harder to trace and easier to scale. From encrypted messaging to unregulated cryptocurrency, scam networks have globalised rapidly, while enforcement efforts remain stuck behind borders.
Why national responses aren’t working
One of the key challenges in confronting this crisis is the fragmented nature of law enforcement.
Scams that begin in one country can target victims in another, while using platforms, payment systems, and communication tools hosted across multiple jurisdictions.
But many national police forces are not equipped to act beyond their borders. And transnational criminal syndicates have exploited the lack of international coordination to operate with relative impunity.
Even where political will exists, legal mismatches and diplomatic bottlenecks prevent timely investigations, arrests or prosecutions.
Countries tend to focus inward, launching isolated crackdowns that fail to dismantle the broader networks.
This mismatch between the global nature of the threat and the localised nature of responses is precisely what allows these scams to thrive.
What needs to happen
To seriously confront this growing criminal economy, regional governments must prioritise coordinated responses, cross-border investigations, and robust intelligence sharing.
This includes:
- Building shared databases and real-time intelligence channels to track trends, suspects and operations;
- Developing harmonised legal tools to enable prosecutions and asset recovery across jurisdictions;
- Working with tech and financial platforms to shut down scam infrastructure;
- Protecting and rehabilitating victims, particularly those trafficked into scam compounds.
ASEAN, Interpol, and UNODC all have a role to play. But meaningful cooperation remains patchy, slow and overly politicised. Tackling scams as a global crisis, not just a regional one, will require serious investment and political leadership.
A crisis we can’t ignore
Scams are often dismissed as digital annoyances or consumer issues.
The response to this crisis cannot be local, slow or siloed. The fight against transnational scams cannot be won in isolation.
Only by working together can states dismantle the criminal networks exploiting the region’s vulnerabilities.
But what we are seeing in Southeast Asia is a complex ecosystem of transnational organised crime, often underpinned by exploitation and violence.
Billions of dollars are being stolen. Thousands of people are being trafficked and abused. And public trust in digital systems is eroding as scams become more sophisticated.
