A UN visit to a raided scam centre in Cambodia. (UNODC)
Allonah Shane Guerrero is a Diplomacy and International Affairs student at De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde. The views expressed are the author’s own and do not represent SEA Daily or that of another organisation.
Long treated as localised cybercrime and law enforcement problems, Southeast Asia’s scam compounds have evolved into a far more dangerous phenomenon: a direct challenge to regional security and institutional credibility.
These compounds are not simply places where online fraud occurs. They are physical nodes within transnational criminal networks that move people, money, technology and expertise across borders. Human trafficking, forced criminality, cybercrime and illicit finance increasingly converge within the same operations.
The scale is difficult to dismiss. In 2025, the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) reported that victims from 66 countries had been trafficked into online scam centres and that 74% of identified trafficking victims had been taken to centres in Southeast Asia.
The international response is also intensifying. The US imposed sanctions in April 2026 on Cambodian senator Kok An and associated individuals and entities linked to scam compounds. In July, the European Union (EU) sanctioned seven individuals and three entities over serious human rights violations connected to scam centres in Southeast Asia.
For ASEAN, the question is no longer whether scam compounds constitute a regional problem. It is whether ASEAN can coordinate its member states effectively enough to deal with one.
A Convergence of Crimes
Raided gang-run internet ‘scam farm’ in Manila, the Philippines. (UNODC / Laura Gil)
Calling these operations “online scams” understates their complexity.
Many compounds are large facilities where workers are recruited, transported and, in some cases, confined. Some knowingly participate in fraud, while others are trafficked through deceptive job offers and forced to commit criminal acts. INTERPOL has documented the use of debt bondage, violence and other abuses within scam centres.
The result is a convergence of several security threats.
First, human trafficking. Recruitment can begin in one country, transit through another and end at a compound elsewhere. The trafficking of workers is therefore not incidental to the scam economy; it is part of the infrastructure sustaining it. The UN Human Rights Office has described the phenomenon as involving trafficking into forced criminality on a large scale.
Second, cybercrime. Scams range from investment and romance fraud to impersonation and other forms of social engineering. INTERPOL’s 2026 assessment found that cyber-scam techniques such as phishing are among the region’s most widespread and financially damaging cyber threats, with criminals increasingly using artificial intelligence (AI) and sophisticated social engineering on an industrial scale.
Third, organised crime and illicit finance. These operations require recruitment networks, transport, communications infrastructure and financial channels for moving and laundering proceeds. Cryptocurrency is particularly relevant: the EU’s sanctions identified cryptocurrency investment scams among the activities associated with targeted networks.
This is why scam compounds cannot be treated as ordinary cybercrime. They are convergence points for multiple forms of transnational organised crime.
Where ASEAN’s Borders Become Criminal Assets
Entrance into the Sam Liam Kham Checkpoint building in the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in Bokeo Province, Laos. Previous raids have uncovered scam networks in the SEZ that take advantage of ASEAN’s porous borders. (Wikimedia/Slleong)
The physical compound is the wrong unit of analysis.
When governments raid a compound, the network behind it does not necessarily disappear. The UN Human Rights Office has documented how criminal actors change and relocate operations, build new centres and upgrade existing compounds in response to government action. This is particularly significant in borderlands and Special Economic Zones (SEZs), where regulatory gaps and contested authority can provide favourable conditions for criminal enterprises. In some cases, these weaknesses can create protected grey zones in which criminal networks operate with the support, tolerance or protection of local power structures.
The EU’s sanctions illustrate the more extreme end of this problem. It sanctioned the Democratic Karen Benevolent Army, alleging that it facilitated large-scale scam centres in Myanmar’s Karen State by allowing compounds to operate under its protection. The uncomfortable lesson is that the exploited loopholes are beyond weak laws. They are the differences in state capacity and, in some places, relationships with local power structures. A successful crackdown in one location can therefore simply push criminal activity towards the next jurisdiction where enforcement is weaker.
The problem is not necessarily that ASEAN lacks mechanisms. It is that those mechanisms must keep pace with networks deliberately designed to operate across jurisdictions.
ASEAN has already recognised the transnational nature of the threat. Its 2025 ASEAN Declaration on Combating Cybercrime and Online Scams describes online scams as a highly pervasive and complex transnational organised threat and calls for deeper law enforcement coordination. But ASEAN’s preference for sovereignty, non-interference and consensus has long been central to its political identity. These principles allow states with vastly different political systems and interests to cooperate without surrendering national autonomy. However, it is precisely these respected boundaries that transnational criminal networks can exploit.
A syndicate can recruit in one country, operate in another, move its proceeds through a third, and relocate when enforcement intensifies. Governments cannot respond with the same flexibility because their authority remains territorially bounded. They do not need to abandon non-interference; they should understand regional intelligence-sharing as a means of defending collective sovereignty. States do not exercise sovereignty more effectively by allowing criminal networks to use neighbouring jurisdictions as operational bases.
ASEAN already has institutions that could support this approach. The ASEAN Convention Against Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (ACTIP) provides a regional framework for preventing trafficking, prosecuting offenders and protecting victims, while its current work plan calls for stronger regional cooperation and intelligence exchange. The ASEAN Chiefs of National Police (ASEANAPOL) likewise has an explicit mandate to facilitate criminal intelligence-sharing and coordinate joint operations and investigations against organised crime.
The challenge, therefore, is less about creating another mechanism and more about making existing ones capable of supporting faster operational action against networks that move at lightning speed.
ASEAN’s Reputation in the Security Equation
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan and UNODC visited Thailand’s Anti-Cyber Scam Center, launched in late 2025 under the Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) and Royal Thai Police. (CIB)
There is another reason the issue has become strategically important: scam centres are increasingly affecting ASEAN’s international reputation.
The significance of the US and EU sanctions lies not only in whom they target, but in what they signal. External powers are increasingly willing to use their own financial and legal instruments against criminal networks operating in Southeast Asia. External enforcement can complement regional cooperation, but if it becomes the more visible response to a persistent regional problem, questions about ASEAN’s capacity will inevitably follow.
ASEAN’s influence rests partly on the credibility of ASEAN centrality—the idea that ASEAN-led institutions should remain important platforms for managing issues in the region. If external powers increasingly conclude that they must impose unilateral sanctions and pursue their own enforcement measures because regional mechanisms are insufficient, that centrality becomes harder to defend.
The reputational consequences could extend to Southeast Asia’s digital ambitions. The region is seeking greater connectivity, digital investment and economic integration. It cannot simultaneously promote itself as a trusted digital growth centre while becoming internationally associated with industrial-scale online fraud.
Security and reputation are therefore becoming inseparable.
The Cost of Falling Behind
US Attorney for the District of Columbia (DC) Jeanine Pirro leading a press conference announcing the Scam Centre Strike Force aimed at eradicating Southeast Asian fraud hubs, on November 12, 2025. (US Attorney’s Office)
The networks are unlikely to remain static and the threat will become harder to contain.
By now, we should have a clearer idea of what AI could do to this problem: make fraudulent communications more convincing, create increasingly credible false identities and open new ways for scammers to profit at greater scale. INTERPOL has already identified AI and increasingly sophisticated social engineering as part of the region’s evolving cyber-threat landscape.
The future scam centre may therefore be less a physical compound than a distributed criminal network operating across borders. This is why raids alone will increasingly be insufficient. Shutting down one location does little if the people, money and infrastructure behind it remain intact and simply move elsewhere. ASEAN therefore faces a choice: continue responding to scam compounds one jurisdiction at a time, or recognise that the mobility of these networks is precisely what makes them a regional security threat.
The ASEAN architecture already exists. ACTIP provides a framework for trafficking cases, ASEANAPOL facilitates police cooperation, and the ASEAN Treaty on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters provides a basis for cross-border assistance in tracing, freezing and confiscating criminal assets. The challenge is making these mechanisms work quickly enough against networks that can move people, evidence and money across borders.
ASEAN must also confront the political economies that allow criminal networks to embed themselves in protected grey zones, exploit weak governance and develop relationships with local power structures. Otherwise, every successful crackdown risks becoming an incentive for criminals to relocate rather than a reason for them to leave.
The consequences of failing to do so are increasingly visible. The US and EU are already using their own sanctions and financial systems to target Southeast Asian scam networks. Regional cooperation does not diminish national sovereignty; it gives states a better chance of exercising it against actors deliberately exploiting their borders. If ASEAN’s response remains slower and more fragmented than the networks themselves, external powers will have greater reason to act independently.
The issue will then no longer be whether scam centres threaten ASEAN’s security, but whether ASEAN can still credibly claim to manage the security challenges in its own neighbourhood. Because in the fight against scam centres, ASEAN is not merely defending its people and its borders. It is defending the credibility of ASEAN centrality itself.
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