UN says call centre gangs scammed Asian victims out of over 88 billion dollars in 2025

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The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has revealed that call centre gangs and online scam networks caused losses of at least 88.3 billion US dollars to people in the Asia-Pacific region in 2025, and the figure could reach as high as 114.1 billion US dollars. The report states that Southeast Asia remains the hub of the online scam business, mostly run by criminal networks originating from China, which have continuously evolved their criminal methods to evade crackdowns by authorities. These include diversifying revenue sources, exploiting corruption loopholes, and adopting artificial intelligence to increase the efficiency of their operations. Delphine Schantz, UNODC Regional Representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, said these criminal networks are no longer confined to a single type of illegal business, but have expanded into multiple illicit markets while sharing services in a franchise-like model similar to the business sector. The report also notes that online scam centres in Southeast Asia generate billions of dollars annually, with a large number of workers being foreign nationals who are deceived or trafficked into working under forced and oppressive conditions. UNODC found that people from at least 80 countries and territories have ended up in these scam centres, while recruitment networks have used countries in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa as transit points, and have recently begun expanding recruitment of workers with language skills in German, Polish, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, French, Swedish, Norwegian, and English to support market expansion into new regions. Although many countries in the region have intensified crackdowns, UNODC says such measures have only caused criminal networks to relocate their operations rather than dismantling the business. Call centre gangs have moved from Myanmar and Laos to Timor-Leste, Pacific island nations, and some areas in Africa. Criminal groups often employ a strategy of jurisdiction shopping, choosing to set up bases in countries with weak laws, lax oversight, and corruption problems, which are key factors enabling the growth of tech-driven criminal networks in the region. Furthermore, UNODC warns that beyond using generative AI to create fake text, images, or voices, criminal groups are likely to adopt agentic AI in the future, which can operate more autonomously, including selecting victims, carrying out scam operations through social engineering, and stealing and laundering money via digital currencies. Inshik Sim, a lead analyst at UNODC, said the scale and sophistication of the expanding transnational criminal economy is growing faster than the capacity of current countermeasures, which were not designed to deal with criminal networks of this level of complexity.

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