For most people who use the phone or interact online, scams have become part of everyday life. Familiar methods are used, including fake investment proposals, romance scams through dating apps and social media, impersonation as bank representatives, police or family members in distress and fake online shops. Behind them lies a criminal industry that operates across borders, digital platforms and financial networks. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimates that victims across East and Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand have lost up to USD 114.1 billion in 2025. In Europe, the Global Anti-Scam Alliance (GASA) found that three in four adults had encountered a scam in the past year, with an estimated USD 57 billion lost across 15 countries. Globally, INTERPOL cites an estimated USD 442 billion in fraud losses in 2025 and expects offending to escalate significantly over the next three to five years, as AI makes fraud 4.5 times more profitable than traditional methods.
Fraud lies at the center of a web of crime that includes human trafficking, cybercrime and specialist money-laundering networks. While recent media reporting has focused on Cambodia as a major hub for scam syndicates, scam compounds operate in several border areas of the region. Compound recruiters have also sought German, Polish, Dutch and other European language speakers. INTERPOL has also identified scam centres in Central, Eastern and Southern Europe and in April 2026 Austrian and Albanian authorities shut down call centres in Tirana linked to more than EUR 50 million in losses. The networks feed each other, such as the sale of phishing kits by Eastern European groups to scam centres in Southeast Asia, and money stolen in Europe typically passes through accounts in southern Europe to financial hubs in East Asia and the Middle East, increasingly via cryptocurrency.
Given the pervasiveness of the problem, closer cooperation is imperative. Cross-border action is gaining ground – INTERPOL’s HAECHI VI operation across 40 countries recovered USD 439 million and blocked more than 68,000 bank accounts. Cambodia has frozen nearly USD 1 billion in assets of the Prince Group, indicted by US authorities for operating one of the largest transnational criminal organisations in Asia, sought INTERPOL Red Notices for suspects who fled abroad and shared intelligence with the US FBI and China’s Ministry of Public Security. At the country and regional levels, Singapore’s Shared Responsibility Framework requires banks and telecoms operators to compensate scam victims when they breach their anti-phishing duties, while the EU’s ESIWA+ programme supports anti-scam cooperation with India, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. ASEAN’s 2025 Declaration on Combatting Cybercrime and Online Scams covers joint investigations, extradition and freezing of criminal proceeds.
Despite these efforts, most victims never recover their losses: in Europe, only one in four who lost money reported it, and just 6% of those who had gone to the police recovered any funds. Some older victims are scammed again and victim support remains patchy or absent. Pushing back against the scam industry will take deeper and more sustained cooperation between police, financial intelligence units, banks and digital platforms across both regions. This is crucial – while scam losses run into billions, the greater cost will be the loss in trust in our societies and our systems.
Sources:
Global Anti-Scam Alliance, June 2026, ‘State of Scams in Europe 2026’, GASA
OCCRP, 9 June 2026, ‘A $57 Billion Toll: How Evolving Scams Are Fleecing Europe’, OCCRP
INTERPOL, March 2026, ‘Global Financial Fraud Threat Assessment, Second Edition’, INTERPOL
OCCRP, 21 July 2026, ‘UN Report Details Southeast Asia’s Interconnected Criminal Economy’, OCCRP
Zembla (BNNVARA), October 2026, ‘Dutch People Targeted by Scam Slaves in Cambodia’, BNNVARA
Cryptopolitan, 22 October 2026, ‘Cambodia Freezes Prince Group Assets’, Cryptopolitan
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