Bangkok (Thailand), 7 October 2024 – A new report launched today has found that Asian crime syndicates have integrated new service-based business models and technologies including malware, generative artificial intelligence (AI), and deepfakes into their operations while establishing new underground markets and cryptocurrency solutions for their money laundering needs.
The report, titled Transnational Organized Crime and the Convergence of Cyber-Enabled Fraud, Underground Banking, and Technological Innovation: A Shifting Threat Landscape, is the second in a series of ongoing threat analyses produced by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
“Organized crime groups are converging and exploiting vulnerabilities, and the evolving situation is rapidly outpacing governments’ capacity to contain it,” said Masood Karimipour, UNODC Regional Representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific. “Leveraging technological advances, criminal groups are producing larger scale and harder to detect fraud, money laundering, underground banking and online scams. This has led to the creation of a criminal service economy, and the region has now emerged as a key testing ground for transnational criminal networks looking to expand their influence and diversify into new business lines.”
The report outlines recent cases that demonstrate how underregulated online gambling platforms and increasingly high-risk and often unauthorized virtual asset service providers (VASPs) that have proliferated in recent years are being used by major organized crime groups to move, launder and integrate billions in criminal proceeds into the financial system without accountability.
Cases examined also highlight how illegal online casino operators have diversified business lines to include cyber-enabled fraud and crypto-based money laundering services. Extensive evidence shows organized crime influence within casino compounds, special economic zones and border areas to conceal illicit activities.
“It is more critical than ever for governments to recognize the severity, scale and reach of this truly global threat, and to prioritize solutions that address the rapidly evolving criminal ecosystem in the region,” Karimipour added.
Through human trafficking for forced criminality, organized crime groups regularly force thousands of workers to scam victims from illegal scam compounds, often deceiving them into these centres with fake job adverts.
UNODC estimates financial losses between US $18 billion and $37 billion from scams targeting victims in East and Southeast Asia in 2023 alone, with a high proportion of these losses attributed to scams committed by organized crime groups in Southeast Asia.
The report also notes a rise in AI-driven crimes involving deepfakes, demonstrated by more than a 600% increase in mentions of deepfake-related content targeting criminal groups in Southeast Asia across monitored online platforms in the first half of 2024.
“The integration of generative artificial intelligence by transnational criminal groups involved in cyber-enabled fraud is a complex and alarming trend observed in Southeast Asia, and one that represents a powerful force multiplier for criminal activities,” said John Wojcik, UNODC Regional Analyst. “These developments have not only expanded the scope and efficiency of cyber-enabled fraud and cybercrime; they have also lowered the barriers to entry for criminal networks that previously lacked the technical skills to exploit more sophisticated and profitable methods.”
The new technical policy brief describes the mechanics, intricacies, and drivers of the convergence of transnational organized crime in Southeast Asia. It has been developed through extensive examination and analysis of criminal indictments, case records, court filings, related public disclosure, and other data collected in consultation with authorities and partners over several years. Its development has included an extensive mapping and analysis of thousands of so-called ‘grey and black business’ online groups, including clear web and dark web forums and marketplaces explicitly used for illicit activities.
Building on the ASEAN Regional Cooperation Roadmap to Address Transnational Organized Crime and Trafficking in Persons Associated with Casinos and Scam Operations in Southeast Asia, the study also provides a list of recommendations geared towards strengthening knowledge and awareness, legislation and policy, and enforcement and regulatory responses in the region, intended to assist governments to address the situation.
Click here to access UNODC’s threat analysis on casinos, underground banking and money laundering from January 2024
Click here to access UNODC’s policy brief on trafficking for forced criminality and scam centres from September 2023.
Click here to learn more about UNODC's Regional Programme.
Click here to learn more about UNODC's Regional Programme and work on cybercrime.
Click here to learn more about UNODC’s work to address human trafficking in the region.
