Rooting out the scam scourge in South-east Asia
Beyond physical raids, can authorities successfully target the finances of syndicates based in the region?
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[SINGAPORE] In the past year, every day, Cambodian authorities inspected 78 suspected scam centres and raided two on average. In Laos, officials carried out seven such operations per month in the first half of this year. Over five days in June, Timor-Leste police hit three scam farms.
Yet, for all these crackdowns, South-east Asia’s multibillion-dollar cyberscam industry has proven remarkably resilient. After the dismantling of one scam centre, two more may emerge – under different guises and in different jurisdictions.
Where raids fall short, the solution may lie in clogging the financial plumbing of these illicit networks instead, say analysts.
