BANGKOK - Scam networks based in South-East Asia cost victims up to US$114.1 billion in 2025, the United Nations said.
The estimate comes from An Interconnected Criminal Ecosystem: Transnational Organized Crime Threat Assessment for South-East Asia 2026, which the UN Office on Drugs and Crime launched on July 21 in Bangkok.
The report put combined scam losses across East Asia, South-East Asia, Australia and New Zealand at between $88.3 billion and $114.1 billion for 2025, up from an estimated $18 billion to $37 billion in 2023. Even at the low end, UNODC said, the 2025 figure exceeds the gross domestic product of several countries in the region.
UNODC said criminal groups that once operated within a single country or a single type of crime now run integrated networks spanning drug trafficking, cyber-enabled fraud, human trafficking and migrant smuggling, sharing the same financial and technical infrastructure.
“Their operating model looks like corporate franchising,” said Delphine Schantz, UNODC's regional representative for South-East Asia and the Pacific, at the Bangkok launch. Departments for laundering money, trafficking people, smuggling migrants and harvesting data now plug into the same shared networks, she said.
People from at least 80 countries and territories have been identified inside scam compounds in the region, UNODC said, with recruitment networks running through transit hubs in Asia, the Middle East and Africa.
Recruiters are widening their reach, with scam compound recruitment ads now targeting German, Polish, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, French, Swedish and Norwegian speakers alongside English speakers, the report found.
UNODC last assessed the region’s organized crime landscape in 2019.
Drug trafficking remains a major revenue source too as the combined retail value of the region’s methamphetamine, ketamine and heroin markets is estimated at $75 billion to $109.7 billion. Methamphetamine alone is worth up to $74.8 billion, about 20% higher than the 2019 estimate.
UNODC also said “malvertising,” the use of legitimate ad networks to spread malware, rose 42% in 2025 from a year earlier.
UNODC lead analyst Inshik Sim said the scale and complexity of the criminal economy are “outpacing existing responses.”
“The growth we are seeing has fueled an entire ecosystem of ancillary services, many of them operating under the appearance of legitimate commercial activity,” he said.
