The region has experienced its share of criminality, but the recent explosion of online scam operations is both quantitatively and qualitatively different.

However, despite still being relatively juvenile, perhaps two to three years old, the cyber-scamming industry looks far more consequential than any of the other criminal activities mentioned above and may soon rival drug trafficking in value. The United States Institute of Peace reckons “pig butchering” scams could be generating the equivalent of 40 percent of each of the formal economies of Cambodia, Myanmar, and Laos. In Cambodia alone, the industry is believed to be worth around $12.5 billion annually. The USAID’s latest Counter-Trafficking in Persons report estimates there could be 150,000 people coerced into the industry’s labor force in Cambodia alone. There might be half this number in Laos. There are no good estimates of how much money from the industry is being laundered through the Southeast Asian economies, tainting every formal sector it touches.

Cambodia, for instance, is well on its way to becoming the world’s first “scam state.”

https://thediplomat.com/2024/12/cyberscamming-is-southeast-asias-incurable-disease/

 

An important article documenting the growth of the scam in SE Asiea (as Nigeria is challenged for scam capital of the world )