The criminal networks behind Southeast Asia’s cyber scam centers now operate worldwide and take in an estimated $2 trillion to $3 trillion a year, Interpol’s secretary-general has warned.
Jurgen Stock made the claim on March 27 at a briefing in Interpol’s Singapore office. What began as a regional threat, he said, has grown into a global problem with millions of victims. He named two causes: the anonymity of the internet and the upheaval of the COVID-19 pandemic. Together they let these groups work at a scale nobody had seen before.
The scam centers are a big part of that shift. Many are staffed by people who were trafficked or coerced after being promised legitimate jobs. For organized crime, they open a new revenue line next to the old ones. Drug trafficking still earns heavily, but the same groups also deal in human trafficking, arms trafficking, intellectual property theft and vehicle theft. Stock said these activities feed each other, because gangs can reuse routes they already control. By his estimate, a single organized crime group makes up to $50 billion a year.
The human cost shows up in the regional figures. Over 100,000 people have been trafficked into scam facilities in Cambodia alone, according to recent reports. In November of the previous year, Myanmar extradited thousands of Chinese telecom fraud suspects to China.
Stock used the Singapore stop to praise the host country. He cited a recent money-laundering case in which Singapore seized assets worth more than S$3 billion ($2.23 billion). Even so, he said, governments will not break these networks without closer international cooperation and coordinated policing, and vulnerable people need protection from being drawn into the trade.
