Organized crime networks bilked residents across the Asia-Pacific region out of at least $88 billion in 2025, the United Nations announced Tuesday, as transnational criminal groups continue to outmaneuver authorities with increasingly sophisticated tactics.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) released a new report warning that criminal syndicates — many of Chinese origin and centered in Southeast Asia — are evolving faster than law enforcement can respond. The groups are diversifying their illegal operations, exploiting corruption, and now turning to artificial intelligence to sharpen their schemes.
According to the report, estimated losses across East Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand ranged between $88.3 billion and $114.1 billion for 2025 — a sum exceeding the entire economic output of several countries in the region.
Delphine Schantz, the UNODC’s Regional Representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, described how these criminal networks have grown far beyond their original territories and trades.
“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,” she said.
Scam centers throughout Southeast Asia run illegal online operations targeting victims around the world, generating enormous annual profits. Many of these facilities are staffed by foreign nationals who were trafficked and are held in harsh, controlled conditions.
The UNODC found that people from at least 80 countries and territories have been identified inside scam compounds across the region. Criminal recruitment networks are using transit hubs in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa to lure new workers.
As these operations expand into new markets, the gangs are increasingly looking beyond Asia for recruits. Job advertisements tied to these criminal networks have targeted individuals fluent in German, Polish, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, French, Swedish, Norwegian, and English.
Law enforcement pressure has pushed some operations out of countries like Myanmar and Laos, but has not shut them down. Instead, gangs have relocated to East Timor, Pacific Island nations, and parts of Africa — a strategy the report describes as “jurisdiction shopping” to find regions with weaker oversight and governance.
Corruption, the report emphasized, is the “primary enabler” of tech-driven organized crime across the region.
Looking ahead, the report warns that criminal groups are expected to move beyond using generative AI for content creation and begin deploying more advanced “agentic” AI systems. These tools could allow them to more independently identify targets, run manipulation campaigns, and carry out cryptocurrency theft and money laundering.
The rapid expansion of the scam industry has also spawned a broader criminal economy, including underground banking, data trafficking, and money laundering services.
“The scale and complexity of this expanding organised crime economy are outpacing existing responses, which were not structured to address such sophisticated criminal activity,” said Inshik Sim, a lead analyst at UNODC.
