United Nations warns of US$40 billion in Asian gambling and fraud scams
The United Nations has issued a report warning of the spread of the Asian scam industry, including illegal gambling, fraud, and money laundering, which is said to be worth US$40 billion.
The report, issued by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, warns that organised crime groups based in Southeast and East Asia are expanding their operations into new regions, in response to tougher enforcement action by local authorities.
The United Nations estimates that hundreds of industrial-scale scamming centers exist, mainly in the border regions of Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia, and the Philippines.
The Asian crime syndicates that run these operations are now reportedly expanding into other parts of the world. According to the report, illegal gambling, fraud, and other scams have been reported in Africa and South America.
Arrests have been made concerning fraudulent activity in Nigeria, Zambia, and Angola. In 2023, police in Peru rescued a group of Malaysians who had been trafficked by a Taiwan-based group involved in cybercrime.
The report also highlighted Brazil as having “emerged as one country that has faced a growing set of challenges related to cyber-enabled fraud, online gambling and related money laundering, with some linkages to criminal groups operating in Southeast Asia.”
In a statement, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s acting regional representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, Benedikt Hofman, said that governments need to be ready to respond to the rapid expansion of these criminal operations.
“The convergence between the acceleration and professionalization of these operations on the one hand and their geographical expansion into new parts of the region and beyond on the other translates into a new intensity in the industry – one that governments need to be prepared to respond to,” Hofmann said.
In the Philippines this year the government have been making a concerted effort to clamp down on crime rings associated with the now banned online gambling, or POGO, industry.
More recently, Philippine Senate Deputy Minority Leader Risa Hontiveros stressed the need for a more stringent approach to preventing the re-emergence of illegal POGO-like operations both in the Philippines and in the wider region. She suggested rejecting deportation as a punishment for foreign nationals caught in such operations to avoid them taking their operations elsewhere.
