Asian Online Scam Victims Lost Upto $114 Billion In 2025 As Cybercrime Networks Expand: UN Report
· Free Press Journal
New Delhi, July 21, 2026: Victims of transnational online scams across East Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand lost an estimated $88.3 billion to $114.1 billion in 2025, according to a United Nations (UN) report released on Tuesday.
The losses are at least three times higher than the estimated $18 billion to $37 billion reported in 2023, reflecting "the dramatic scaling of this criminal economy".
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The report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said Southeast Asia, particularly Cambodia and Myanmar, has become a major hub for organised crime syndicates operating fake romance and cryptocurrency investment scams.
These networks often use people who are either willing recruits or victims of human trafficking to defraud internet users worldwide from heavily fortified compounds, AFP reported.
Southeast Asia Remains Epicentre
The cyberscam industry has expanded rapidly in recent years. Initially targeting Chinese-speaking victims, organised crime groups have broadened their reach to scam people across the globe.
According to the report, scammers from at least 80 countries and territories have been recruited or trafficked into scam compounds across the Mekong region.
Artificial intelligence-powered translation tools have enabled criminal networks to target new markets more easily, although recruitment advertisements continue to seek speakers of German, Polish, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, French, Swedish, Norwegian and English.
China, South Korea and Taiwan recorded the highest financial losses from online scams in the region over the past two years, with each losing billions of dollars.
Crackdown Fails To Halt Networks
Authorities across the region, under pressure from countries including the US, Britain and China, have intensified action against scam operations. In the past year, several alleged scam network bosses were extradited from Cambodia to China after the US and Britain imposed sanctions on companies and individuals accused of running large-scale cyberscam operations linked to human trafficking.
However, the report said many criminal operations continue despite the arrests. It also warned that some people released from raided scam compounds are returning to their home countries with criminal expertise.
"It's always a bit of a thin distinction between victims and whoever has been using their presence in the group to acquire criminal expertise that they're going to be able to sell," UNODC regional representative Delphine Schantz said.
"They're going back to their country of origin and they're tapping into some existing criminal networks," she told a news conference, noting that this was happening in Africa as well as Europe, particularly in the Balkans.
Criminal Ecosystem Expands
The UNODC said scam centres form only one part of a wider criminal ecosystem in Southeast Asia that has evolved over the past decade. The network also includes methamphetamine trafficking, child sexual exploitation and real estate investment, while relying on established trade routes and cryptocurrencies to conceal illicit activities.
Organised criminal groups are "moving away from a fragmented system of locally rooted criminal syndicates toward an increasingly integrated, transnational, and technologically sophisticated criminal economy," the report said. It warned that this transformation is challenging conventional law enforcement while posing risks to governance, economic stability and social order.
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