Regulation Asia sat down with Rebecca Miller, Regional Coordinator, Human Trafficking and Migrant Smuggling, for UNODC’s Regional Office for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, to discuss the evolution of scam centres in Southeast Asia and the role of the financial sector in combatting this crime.

This interview was conducted for the “AML Tech Barometer 2025” report, published by NICE Actimize and Regulation Asia to explore AML and fraud trends based on survey and interview data collected from 172 practitioners in Asia Pacific.

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Can you explain the context under which scam centres in Southeast Asia have emerged?

Rebecca Miller: A lot of this stems from the fact that Southeast Asia is very diverse. It’s a dynamic region, and it’s really shown remarkable rates of economic development and growth in recent years. But it’s also facing unprecedented challenges that are being posed by organised crime and illicit economies. This can very much be seen in relation to the special economic zones, which are being promoted and proliferating across the region to facilitate economic development. Unfortunately, these zones are also enabling organised crime to grow alongside licit economies in the region.

Transnational organised crime, particularly in the Mekong, is not new. This region has had a very long history of powerful organised crime groups and non-state armed groups, which exert de facto control over certain territories. This is very much what we’re seeing in Myanmar. These groups have invested heavily into casinos and special economic zones which unfortunately have been hubs for a range of illicit activities, such as drug trafficking and wildlife trafficking, even before scam centres came onto our radar.

The transnational organised crime landscape in Southeast Asia is evolving faster than it ever has previously. With scam operations, this has very much been marked by the growth in cyber enabled fraud, driven by highly sophisticated networks. And linked to this is a complex network of money launderers, human traffickers and a growing number of other service providers and facilitators.

This came onto our radar a few years ago, when we started to get reports from the media, and from the law enforcement officials we were working with, in relation to hundreds and even now tens or hundreds of thousands of people from all around the world being forced to perpetrate sophisticated online scamming.

Rebecca Miller, UNODC

How are the perpetrators luring victims to work in these scam compounds?

Rebecca Miller: A lot of the recruitment is taking place on social media platforms. And a lot of these individuals actually believe that they’re applying for a legitimate job. Individuals are targeted for specific skill sets – this might be IT skills, language skills or HR skills. For example, you might see people being targeted because they speak both Mandarin and English, young adults who are tech savvy or highly educated individuals who understand technologies like AI that are used to advance deep fake fraud.

Many of them will go through multiple stages of an interview process. They will talk to someone with a great background, who looks like they’re from an official company and they think they’re going through a proper job interview process.

But then, once they end up in these compounds, we have had horrific reports of people being beaten, drugged, electrocuted and tortured. I’ve seen a video, which we can’t authenticate, of someone actually being beheaded. There is severe physical and, increasingly, sexual violence that is taking place within these scam operations.

How have these organised crime groups evolved in terms of how they control victims?

Rebecca Miller: In the beginning, it was very much brute force physical violence, but now some networks are using more subtle means to control their victims, such as allowing them a bit more freedom of movement within the compounds but then also confiscating their passports, or threatening their families back home.

You now also have different categories of people going to work in scam compounds, including some who are going more willingly, knowing that they’re going to potentially make a lot of money if they perform well. Then there are others going in knowing they will be scamming individuals, but when they decide they want to leave they find that they’re trapped in the compound.

These are some of the complexities that we’re dealing with in relation to human trafficking. We now have multiple categories of people entering the compounds, meaning law enforcement will need to screen them to identify who is and isn’t a victim.

The majority of people being lured into these scam operations are still usually men between the ages of 19 and 40 years old. But the risk has now also increased for women, who are often forced to play slightly different roles. For example, some are recruited to be models, so that they can be brought out later when victims of romance scams want to see who they’re actually talking to.

There are also women in the compounds who are used as sexual slaves. We’ve had reports from NGOs that we work with, and cases that we’ve seen, of women who are there to satisfy the sexual needs of the men who are working on the floor – not just those committing the cyber scams, but also some of the bosses.

We also have had minors who have been rescued from the compounds, both male and female. We have identified at least 60 nationalities from around the world that have been trafficked into scam operations, but the reality is it is likely even higher. They come from across Africa, South Asia, China, and recently, we have once again seen a growing number of people from Southeast Asia emerging from the compounds.

How have recent actions by Southeast Asian governments to crack down on scam centres helped?

Rebecca Miller: Thailand has really been stepping up in their response to dealing with the scam operations. They called a few meetings with the embassies, and found that most embassies around the table have victims trapped in these scam compounds. We’re providing a lot of support to the Royal Thai Police in helping them to establish an internal, domestic task force.

Cutting off the power and the technology from the Thai side to Myanmar earlier this year was certainly a signal from Thailand that this needs to stop. And it has had an effect. We recently had 260 victims that were released, crossing into Thailand from Myawaddy. There are now over 7,100 from at least 29 countries who are waiting in Myawaddy to be repatriated home.

In the Philippines, they have been starting to do a lot more work to link up the human trafficking and the financial money laundering aspects in their investigations and prosecutions, addressing this from more of a transnational organised crime perspective.

We recently hosted a regional meeting on this, looking at the prosecution of cases. The participants from the Philippines told us that it was the financial element of their cases that enabled them to elevate their investigation and start targeting senior members of the transnational organised crime groups behind these scam operations.

If we can start replicating this across the region and have more countries following the financial flows in these cases, then we’ll really start making more gains on the criminal justice side of this.

What is the role of the financial sector in combatting this crime?

Rebecca Miller: It plays a crucial role. What we’re dealing with in relation to the scam operations is “poly criminality”. So again, human trafficking is one form of criminality, but of course, there’s also money laundering and the illicit profits that are being generated from these scam operations.

We’ve estimated that financial losses from scams targeting victims in East and Southeast Asia reached between USD 18 and 37 billion in 2023. A predominant portion of this is attributed to organised crime groups in Southeast Asia. With that amount of money, not all of it is going through underground banking and the casino systems; a lot is also being channeled through legitimate banks.

The money flows are huge. This is where there is global impact, because money isn’t necessarily staying in this region. It’s going to all corners of the globe, through various exchanges, money mules and service providers who are now getting involved in relation to illicit money flows.

I’ve worked in this space for over 20 years, and we’re now having more and more conversations with FIs than we’ve ever had before. It’s great to see that we’re all starting to communicate and understand each other’s spaces and determine how we can work together.

What is your view of the level of commitment from the financial sector to help combat this crime?

Rebecca Miller: I think that the commitment is very genuine. The conversations that we’ve been having are really about trying to understand the context and the role that FIs and banks can play.

Developing typologies to set triggers for suspicious transactions that may be linked to human trafficking is really important. With this issue in particular, there has been a real recognition by banks and the financial sector that they have an important role to play. They’re committed to this.

In some jurisdictions, this is a little easier than others, because it depends on how the money flows and where the funds are exchanged. In some countries, for example, you have hawala systems and different underground flows, and banks may not actually be used.

Cryptocurrency platforms, underground banking, casino junkets, illegal online gambling platforms – these all very much represent a critical piece of the money laundering infrastructure essentially serving the needs of these transnational organised crime groups.

And the top bosses have connections all around the world, including properties in Western countries and financial flows heading to the US as well as other countries. So tracing the money is a crucial part of this process, also helping to ensure that countries take the issue seriously.

Human trafficking is a key element, and it’s gotten a lot of attention. For countries however, it’s also about looking at how much their citizens are losing from scams, and what this means to their economies. They quantify this through financial flows. So this is really the missing piece of the puzzle that we need to tie this all together and make a real impact.

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This interview was conducted for the “AML Tech Barometer 2025” report, published by NICE Actimize and Regulation Asia to explore AML and fraud trends based on survey and interview data collected from 172 practitioners in Asia Pacific. Download the report here.