Southeast Asian scammers have stolen up to $37 billion in 2023; Singapore ‘tip of the iceberg’: UN

Cybercrime syndicates raked in as much as $37 billion last year and are intensifying their activities across Southeast Asia, despite increasing law enforcement efforts. United Nations said.

“The transnational organized crime threat landscape in Southeast Asia is evolving faster than ever before in history,” said a report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

Since the pandemic, illegal cyber activity has increased dramatically in the countries of the Mekong region – Myanmar, Cambodia And Laos – becoming a hotbed for crime syndicates to set up operations that execute investment schemes for romance, crypto fraud, money laundering and illegal gambling.

With the sector proving to be highly lucrative, these groups are now integrating new service-based business models and technologies, the UN report said. They include the use of generative malware AIand deepfakes in their operations, while opening new underground markets cryptocurrency solutions for their money laundering needs.

“The sheer volume of proceeds generated within the region’s thriving illicit economy has necessitated the professionalization and innovation of money laundering activities, and transnational criminal groups in Southeast Asia have emerged as global market leaders,” the report said.

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Hundreds of thousands of people have been trafficked into those countries by criminal enterprises and forced to work in so-called racket centers with casinos, hotels and special economic zones among the real estate developments that have become “centers for the booming illegal economy, adding to existing governance problems in many of the border areas of the region.”