SUMMARY
- The UNODC has issued recommendations for addressing cyber-enabled fraud in Southeast Asia.
- It also warned that scammers are adopting new tactics and utilizing technologies such as AI.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has urged Southeast Asian countries to criminalize operating a money service business or virtual resource service provider (VASP) without a permit. The office detailed that a few unlicensed VASPs are facilitating transactions for fraudulent operations and high-risk betting locales. These VASPs have associations to known criminals and are included in illicit exercises. One unidentified entity allegedly engaged in “at least hundreds of millions of dollars” in transactions connected to criminal organizations.
These organizations include those associated to large-scale drug trafficking, human trafficking, and cybercrime. The report also highlights groups included in distributing child sexual abuse material and entities sanctioned by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). Eminently, a few wallets are connected to North Korea’s Lazarus Group. “It is critical for governments to recognize the seriousness and scale of this worldwide threat,” expressed Masood Karimipour, UNODC’s regional representative. He emphasized the importance for solutions to address the evolving criminal ecosystem in the region.
The UNODC recommends improved observing of organized crime activities in casinos, junkets, and cyber fraud operations. It also proposes superior training for authorities on online gambling and money laundering strategies that utilize sophisticated technologies, especially cryptocurrencies. Whereas not all scams in the locale include cryptocurrency, it remains a prevalent payment choice for scammers. This inclination stems from the ease of fast cross-border transactions and the low levels of understanding about cryptocurrency.
Online fraud has quickly extended into a gigantic industry in Southeast Asia, frequently operating from modest office blocks or casino complexes. Scammers ordinarily select victims from other regions, some of the time under false pretenses of legitimate business. A previous UN report assessed that around 220,000 individuals work in scam centers in Cambodia and Myanmar, with numerous being coerced into the operations.
Among the predominant scams is “pig butchering,” a sentiment scam where operators befriend victims online and coax them into contributing in fake platforms. The report shows that scammers are diversifying their strategies. New approaches incorporate impersonation scams, job or assignment scams, asset-recovery scams, and targeted phishing attacks. There is moreover an expanded use of progressed technologies like AI and deepfakes to facilitate these operations.