'Highly adaptable': Asia's scam crisis grows as criminal gangs find new ways to avoid crackdowns
The end to Asia's scam crisis is nowhere in sight as criminal gangs adapt to crackdowns by moving operations to new territories and conjure new tricks to solicit money from victims connected by the internet, Interpol warned on Wednesday.
The "scamdemic" which has pulled in tens of thousands of Asians to work - mostly unwittingly - as scam agents, has whipped across the world with West Africans, South Americans and even Europeans pulled into a vortex of crime worth billions of dollars annually to the networks behind it.
It is a two-sided industry, with educated, tech-savvy young workers trafficked into the scamming trade, while victims from Hong Kong to Singapore, Indonesia to China are carefully sifted out via the internet.
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The scammers sell bogus romance, ponzi investment schemes or pose as officials to squeeze a target into a money transfer they never get back.
Many scam hubs, which typically operate from casino compounds converted during the pandemic years, have now moved from Cambodia beyond the reach of the law into parts of Myanmar and Laos.
"These criminal groups are highly adaptable," Isaac Espinosa, acting coordinator of Interpol's Human Trafficking and Migrant Smuggling unit, told This Week in Asia.
"These are very elastic organisations ... Cambodia started taking some action, so they started moving elsewhere to special economic zones and armed group areas. Basically they are constantly changing depending on the response of authorities."
Interpol has now issued an Orange Notice on the scam trend - a global warning regarding serious and imminent threat to public safety.
Red Notices cover wanted individuals, while Purple Notices cover emerging criminal modus operandi, to help law enforcement across the world quickly identify criminal threats.
With 195 countries signed up - including China, Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia, four key nations in Asia's side of the scam industry - Interpol says it has shared information on new scams, a database of criminal suspects and investigative details that could help member nations far apart make an arrest.
"It could be links as small as a bank account number or a crypto wallet, that make a connection between an investigation in one country and another one," Espinosa added.
China has arrested scores of people in recent months linked to scam centres overseas, many targeting Chinese or Chinese-speaking nationals.
In a sign of the increasing seriousness with which some Asian nations are taking the scam scourge, a Thai state enterprise on Tuesday cut off electricity to two notorious border areas held by rebel groups in neighbouring Myanmar where scam centres operate with effective impunity from inside casino compounds.
Among them is KK Park, a casino complex linked to cyber scams. Malaysian escapees have told This Week in Asia of threats, torture and endless hours of forced labour inside those compounds to scam targets harvested from the internet.
The people trafficked to work as scam agents tend to be well educated, young and tech smart. Regional police and scammers who have left the centres say many were lured during the pandemic by the promise of high-paying legitimate online sales or investment jobs.
"Just about anyone in the world could fall victim to either the human trafficking or the online scams carried out through these criminal hubs," said Interpol Secretary General Jurgen Stock.
"What began as a regional crime threat has become a global human trafficking crisis. Much stronger international police cooperation is needed to stop this crime trend from spreading further," he added.
This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
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