$88 B Lost to Scam Gangs in Asia-Pacific, UNODC Says

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) released a report on July 21, 2026 estimating that scam-related losses across East Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand reached between $88.3 billion and $114.1 billion in 2025—an amount larger than the GDP of several regional economies. The report attributes the bulk of the activity to Chinese-origin transnational syndicates operating in Southeast Asia. Victims span at least 80 countries and territories, and recruitment ads target speakers of German, Polish, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, French, Swedish, Norwegian and English.

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UNODC Regional Representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific Delphine Schantz describes the gangs’ structure as resembling corporate franchising, with “specialized departments for laundering money, trafficking people, smuggling migrants, and harvesting data, all plugged into the same, service-based interconnected network.” The groups are expanding into new markets by recruiting outside Asia and are increasingly employing generative and agentic artificial intelligence to craft victim-targeting content, automate social-engineering campaigns, and facilitate cryptocurrency theft and laundering.

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Lead analyst Inshik Sim warns that “the scale and complexity of this expanding organised crime economy are outpacing existing responses, which were not structured to address such sophisticated criminal activity.” Law-enforcement pressure has forced gangs to relocate from Myanmar and Laos to East Timor, Pacific Island states, and parts of Africa, a practice the report calls “jurisdiction shopping.” Corruption is identified as the primary enabler of the tech-driven crime network.

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• “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,” — Delphine Schantz, UNODC Regional Representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific

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• “The scale and complexity of this expanding organised crime economy are outpacing existing responses, which were not structured to address such sophisticated criminal activity,” — Inshik Sim, Lead Analyst, UNODC

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• “Beyond using generative AI to create content, criminal groups are expected to adopt agentic AI systems to more autonomously identify victims, conduct social-engineering campaigns and facilitate cryptocurrency theft and laundering, the report said.” — UNODC report

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