Asian Insider Podcast

South-east Asian scam centres a growing regional security threat

Nirmal Ghosh

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With their heavy security and global reach, South-east Asia’s industrial-size scam centres are a national security threat to the countries they are based in, as well as to the countries they target.

The criminal organisations running these centres, where thousands are lured to work as forced labour stealing billions of dollars from victims worldwide, originate mostly from China and, in Asia’s case, are physically located mainly in Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar, but also across the region in other countries.

According to a report released in May by the US Institute of Peace (USIP), scam centres operating out of Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos accounted for US$39 billion (S$50.1 billion) in stolen funds, as of the end of 2023.

There is mounting concern among law enforcement authorities in China and other countries regarding the impact of this transnational organised crime, which amounts to a significant share of the GDP of some countries such as Laos, and features actual territory controlled by armed groups.

While Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos are the epicentre of the criminal industry, such crime operates out of other places as well.

In the Philippines, in March, hundreds of people were rescued from a love scam or “pig-butchering” centre some 100km north of Manila which was masquerading as an online gambling firm, authorities said. Police said they rescued 383 Filipinos, 202 Chinese, and 73 other foreign nationals.

Employees at these scam centres are often lured or trafficked there from low-employment countries like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Philippines, and as far as African countries, to work essentially as forced labour. Some scam centres house thousands.

Experts say sporadic crackdowns, of the type recently seen in Laos’ notorious Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone (GTSEZ), are often choreographed ahead of time, enabling kingpins to evade them.

For example, Zhao Wei, a Chinese organised crime boss who operates in the GTSEZ, is apparently unscathed.

The “Zhao Wei Transnational Criminal Organisation” was sanctioned in 2018 by the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).

“Based in Laos within the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone... the Zhao Wei TCO exploits this region by engaging in drug trafficking, human trafficking, money laundering, bribery, and wildlife trafficking, much of which is facilitated through the Kings Romans Casino located within the GTSEZ,” the US Treasury designation stated.

Scam centres have targeted people in over 100 countries around the world, with the average victim losing more or less all of their assets, as Mr Jason Tower, Myanmar Country Director at USIP, told the Asian Insider Podcast this week.

Losses have ranged from US$100,000 to US$300,000 and sometimes as much as US$50 million, Mr Tower said.

“This is a massive wealth transfer to malign actors in South-east Asia – actors who are undermining governance, corrupt actors... who also have close ties to militia groups,” he said. “You’ve got people around the world who are targeted, and countries are not able to keep their nationals safe from these scams.

“Secondly, these are forced labour compounds. You’ve got hundreds of thousands of people, according to the UN, according to USIP’s own research... who have been tricked or deceived or trafficked into these large scam compounds,” he said.

“In order to imprison people inside the compounds, generally the compounds need to securitise. Many of them are located along borders, often in places where you have very weak states or you have really no strong or fragmented state sovereignty,” he added.

On Thailand’s borders, for instance, scam compounds are very well guarded by the Myanmar military’s border guard force, and in other places like Laos’ GTSEZ by well-armed private security forces, he noted.

Malaysia - as the next chair of Asean in 2025 - has an opportunity to show leadership on this, he suggested, especially as next year is the 10th anniversary of the Kuala Lumpur Declaration on Combating Transnational Crime.

“This is an issue of sovereignty,” Mr Tower told Asian Insider. “You are seeing in places like Myanmar, these criminal groups who are controlling large territories. And that’s not something I think that most states in the region are going to have much of an appetite for over the longer term.”

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Host: Nirmal Ghosh (

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Produced and edited by: Studio+65 and Fa’izah Sani

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