Southeast Asian nations target security risk posed by scam centers
Peter Parson
Southeast Asian nations are cracking down on scam centers, a global criminal enterprise committing hundreds of millions of dollars of fraud annually while abusing human rights and threatening regional security.
Authorities in Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand are disrupting the syndicates, arresting offenders and freeing captive workers. Recent efforts have targeted Myanmar’s southeastern Myawaddy region, where scam centers reportedly operate under militias linked to the military junta that seized power from the democratically elected government in February 2021.
“Southeast Asia’s scam centers are closely tied to Chinese transnational criminal organizations,” Julia Dickson, a research associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a United States-based think tank, told FORUM. “The centers rely on trafficked labor, locking trafficking victims in heavily guarded compounds and forcing them to conduct specific illicit online activities, such as impersonation fraud scams, data harvesting or money laundering.”
Scam victims in the U.S. lose up to $50 billion annually, typically involving fraudulent cryptocurrency investments, according to The Economist newspaper.
Scam centers have flourished in Myanmar’s border regions such as Myawaddy, where the military junta has significant influence. Online fraud, human trafficking, drug smuggling and casino gambling have become major economic factors in those areas, Dr. Stefanie Kam, a research fellow at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, told FORUM.
“This fuels social instability, exacerbating issues such as gambling addiction, loss of livelihoods and displacement, deepening the country’s ongoing humanitarian crisis,” she said.
Thailand cut off fuel and electricity to Myawaddy in February 2025 to disrupt the scam centers, according to Japan’s Kyodo News agency. Also that month, the Royal Thai Army reported the rescue of more than 260 forced labor victims from scam operations in Myanmar. The freed captives are from nations including Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Ethiopia, Japan, Nepal, Pakistan and the Philippines.
In March 2025, the Singapore Police Force’s Anti-Scam Centre reported that it had partnered with four major banks to prevent more than $58 million in potential losses to scammers during the previous two months. The initiative used automated technology to swiftly identify and protect vulnerable bank customers.
An Indonesian-Philippine operation led to the September 2024 arrest in Indonesia of a former mayor of Bamban, a city in the Philippines’ Tarlac province. The suspect, a Chinese national masquerading under false identity papers, fled after raids on offshore gaming operator centers in Bamban and had been “involved in a scam compound that was bigger than the town itself,” according to The Economist.
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. banned such gaming centers in July 2024 for veering into activities “furthest from gaming, such as financial scamming, money laundering, prostitution, human trafficking, kidnapping, brutal torture — even murder.”
Peter Parson is a FORUM contributor based in Hamilton, New Zealand.
