“The scammer was extraordinarily believable,” Kim Sawyer, a former university professor in Melbourne, said. “He had a British accent, used all the right financial market terms and knew how to induce us by appearing credible every time.”
In 2024, the United States reported $10 billion in losses to scam operations based across Southeast Asia.
Victims span the globe-and include highly educated professionals like the Sawyers, both master’s degree holders and experienced stock market investors.
Governments, law enforcement, and tech firms convened at the UNODC-INTERPOL Global Fraud Summit in Vienna-and later launched the Global Partnership Against Online Scams in Bangkok with Meta and TikTok.
These efforts target shared intelligence, joint investigations, and cross-border prosecutions.
The criminal infrastructure spans Cambodia, the Philippines, and beyond-integrating fraud, money laundering, AI weaponization, malware development, and human trafficking.
In Manila, a former scam compound-now repurposed for the Philippines’ Presidential Anti-Organised Crime Commission-still bears evidence: a karaoke room, gaming hall, and torture chamber. Logbooks list politicians and police officers as guests.
Cambodia recently established the Commission for Combating Online Scams (CCOS), chaired by the Prime Minister and empowered across 25 ministries and armed forces.
UNODC is helping regional agencies build digital evidence capacity, disrupt underground banking, and draft national strategies against transnational organised crime.
“They take your money and they take your soul,” Sawyer said. “They take your self-worth. And then, you feel like you’re being scammed again, by authorities’ lack of response.”