UN, Interpol warn cyber scam networks are adapting despite crackdowns
UN and Interpol officials in Cambodia say scam centres are fragmenting even as fraud costs the world an estimated $440 billion a year.
Officials from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and Interpol warned this week that cyber scam operations across Southeast Asia remain a growing and evolving threat, even as authorities in the region intensify their crackdowns.
Speaking at a two-day conference in Phnom Penh hosted by Cambodia alongside the two agencies, experts acknowledged recent enforcement gains but pointed to persistent gaps. Delphine Schantz, regional representative for the UNODC's Southeast Asia and the Pacific office, said the region's rapid digitalisation had allowed criminal networks to move faster than most other parts of society.
"We see this in the growing global reach of scam centers, but we also see this in the rapid expansion of other online crime types, like illegal gambling, or the distribution of malware," she said.
Schantz stressed that no single country could tackle the problem alone, calling for stronger national action alongside regional and international cooperation.
Nicholas Court, director of the taskforce coordination directorate at Interpol, said scam compounds are increasingly being broken up into smaller operations that are harder to detect — a shift he described as evidence that law enforcement pressure is having an effect. He cautioned, however, that fraud remains the most common crime worldwide by volume, citing estimates from global anti-scam alliances that more than 440 billion US dollars are lost to fraud each year.
Ahead of the conference, Cambodian authorities took journalists to several now-empty scam compounds to highlight their efforts to shut them down. Reporters visited the Jin Wan compound in Kandal province, where abandoned casino rooms, computer equipment and cables were on display, as well as the sprawling "No.8 Park" site in Prey Veng province, run by Chinese tycoon Chen Zhi, who was arrested in January.
Cyberscam operations expanded sharply during the COVID-19 pandemic, with hundreds of thousands of people forced to carry out schemes that have cost victims tens of billions. The compounds proliferated particularly in countries where law enforcement was weak.
Cambodia's prime minister said on Wednesday that the country had eradicated the large-scale scam compounds for which it became known globally, though he did not provide significant new evidence.