The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) recently released a new analysis report titled "Turning the Tide," revealing that transnational organized fraud groups in East Asia and Southeast Asia are rapidly spreading from their original bases to more remote, less regulated, and even transcontinental areas.
This trend is described as "cancer cell-like metastasis," and the challenges of global cybersecurity, anti-money laundering, and human trafficking are becoming increasingly severe.
The report points out that as the fraud parks in border and economic special zones of countries such as Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, and the Philippines are strongly cracked down on, criminal groups begin to move to more remote areas that are harder to reach, even extending their reach to emerging countries in Africa, South Asia, the Middle East, and the South Pacific. These organizations use newly established parks to quickly "revive" and continue to engage in illegal activities such as telecommunications fraud, money laundering, and transnational human trafficking.
Jeremy Doug Hoffman, UNODC Regional Representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, warned: "These criminal networks are like cancer cells, once destroyed, they quickly regenerate elsewhere. They have built a technologically advanced, interconnected transnational criminal system that is constantly eroding the global security network."
According to the report, there are currently hundreds of active fraud centers in Southeast Asia, with an annual illegal profit totaling up to 40 billion US dollars. Criminal gangs generally rely on cryptocurrencies, underground money houses, and regulatory loopholes for money laundering, while also recruiting employees with different language backgrounds, expanding service languages, and "reinvesting" to promote global expansion.
Recently, the Myawaddy region in Myanmar saw an incident where thousands of employees were abandoned after the closure of a fraud park, highlighting the exploitation of manpower in the industry and the difficulty of governance.
At the same time, other regional gang forces have also begun to get involved, forming transnational cooperation chains with fraud networks, including illegal "innovators" such as technology service providers, software developers, and AI tool operators, aiding this new type of cybercrime.
The report specifically points out that cyber fraud is gradually evolving into a "Crime-as-a-Service" model, from online black markets to the integrated use of deep fake technology, AI tools, and malicious software, greatly enhancing the concealment and technical barriers of crime.
"This crisis is escalating simultaneously: on the one hand, the geographical scope is expanding, and on the other hand, the methods of committing crimes are becoming more professional and high-tech." Hoffman emphasized that countries must take decisive action, otherwise they will face increasingly uncontrollable crime risks.
To address the continuously evolving threats, UNODC calls on Southeast Asia and related countries to strengthen financial system regulation, improve the efficiency of intelligence exchange, and collaborate with the international community to advance cross-border asset recovery and freezing mechanisms. The report has been submitted to governments, law enforcement agencies, and international organizations, aiming to promote the implementation of more effective anti-fraud policies and cooperation frameworks.
