Scam gangs defrauded Asia-Pacific residents of at least US$88 billion in 2025, a United Nations office said on Tuesday, with transnational crime groups rapidly evolving tactics to stay ahead of law enforcement.Criminals in Southeast Asia, an epicenter for cyber fraud by mostly Chinese-origin syndicates, are outpacing crackdowns, diversifying revenue streams, exploiting corruption and harnessing artificial intelligence, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said in a new report.
The report estimated scam losses across East Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand between $88.3 billion and $114.1 billion for 2025, a figure larger than the GDP of several of the nations in the region.
Networks that once operated within specific territories or illicit trades are increasingly expanding across multiple illegal markets while using shared services, said Delphine Schantz, UNODC Regional Representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific.
“Their operating model looks like corporate franchising: imagine specialized departments for laundering money, trafficking people, smuggling migrants, and harvesting data, all plugged into the same, service-based interconnected network,” she said.
