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Aidan Jones

Don Pathan

Taking a short cut through Pattaya’s “Scammer Alley”, a neon maze of bars, hotpot restaurants and 24-hour Korean barbecue joints, taxi driver May shakes her head.
The money washing around this Thai resort is so thick with fraud that even her own bank account has been frozen.
“They pay with QR codes linked to mule accounts,” she said, referring to bank accounts legally registered under Thai names but secretly controlled by the foreign cybercriminals who have turned this part of Southeast Asia into a scam empire.
Across Thailand, banks have frozen tens of thousands of suspected “mule” accounts in recent months. Yet the crackdown has also trapped hundreds of ordinary people like May in a bureaucratic dragnet.
“It's not just me, ask every driver, every small business here,” she told This Week in Asia, giving only one name for fear of losing her access to funds entirely. “They’re all being frozen out.”


Hers is just one story in the wider Mekong region now awash with billions of dollars in stolen funds churned out each year by sprawling cyber-fraud operations.
The proceeds wash up not only in Pattaya, but also in the pool villas of Bangkok, the restaurants of Phnom Penh and the supercars of Vientiane, cities where raids frequently uncover caches of gold, watches, cash and luxury toys.
But the scam money’s reach extends far beyond the Mekong. Intelligence analysts say hundreds of millions, likely billions, are being laundered through the world’s most exclusive property markets, from Singapore’s Orchard Road and London’s Mayfair to Manhattan’s luxury flats, alarming banks and regulators alike.
Estimates vary, but the United Nations reckons the victims are losing more than US$40 billion each year to the Mekong’s scam gangs, who operate mainly from Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos. For comparison, Laos’ entire formal economy is worth just over US$16 billion.

“The estimates are astronomical,” said Jason Tower, a senior analyst at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime.
“If this is the mainstay of the economy, then elites are not going to be missing out. Money is being dumped into property, malls and consumption of all kinds, as more or less consolidated scam economies emerge. How you transition out of that will be very complicated.”
A recent US-led crackdown has rattled those in power across the region, exposing links between scam networks and influential political or business elites.
Hundreds of millions of dollars in assets – including prime real estate in Singapore, Hong Kong and London – have been seized from Chinese-Cambodian tycoon Chen Zhi, head of the US-sanctioned Prince Group. The conglomerate has denied any connection to scam money and vowed to clear its name.
Other highly connected figures now wanted by authorities in Thailand include Cambodian senator Kok An, a close ally of long-time leader Hun Sen, and businessman Yim Leak.
Thailand’s Anti-Money Laundering Office said on Wednesday that it planned to confiscate more than US$300 million in assets suspected to be linked to Chen and Yim Leak, including nearly US$190 million worth of shares in Thai energy giant Bangchak Corporation.
With an election looming, Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul has vowed decisive action. “There will be no leniency,” he told reporters. “All those responsible must be brought to justice.”

Yet Anutin’s own government has come under scrutiny recently after a deputy prime minister resigned over alleged links to scam funds, although he denied any wrongdoing.
The prime minister has himself faced awkward questions after old photographs resurfaced showing him with a South African fixer known as “Ben Smith”, now under the spotlight for his alleged links to the regional scam money trail.
“I knew him but I’m not close with him, I don’t have any business with him,” Anutin told reporters on Thursday. “He’s a friend of a friend of a friend.”
Opposition lawmaker and scam whistle-blower Rangsiman Rome is seeking a parliamentary hearing on the issue and says serious questions remain.
“It is unbelievable that scam syndicates have grown so powerful on Thai soil,” he wrote on social media. “Will state officials dare to take down these grey-money forces that have overtaken the country?”

Whack-a-mole warfare
Under pressure from both the United States and China, Myanmar’s junta has staged dramatic raids on scam compounds around Myawaddy, a border town opposite Thailand long known as a hub of cybercrime.
In recent weeks, thousands of trafficked workers from China, Ethiopia, India and the Philippines – many reporting torture and confinement – have been freed.
Images from the area show explosive demolitions of factory-style compounds run by groups aligned with the junta, including the US-sanctioned Democratic Karen Benevolent Army (DKBA).
Meanwhile, rival militias such as the Karen National Union (KNU) have invited journalists to tour captured scam sites, sharing phone evidence of global fraud links and vowing not to let operations resume. Still, the lucrative trade endures.
“There are thousands of scam workers still at the site, especially those who refuse to go home,” KNU spokesman Padoh Saw Tee Nee told This Week in Asia.
The group recently seized the Shunda Park centre – a suspected scam hub run predominantly by Chinese nationals – in Min Let Pan, an area long controlled by the junta-affiliated DKBA.
Fighting has since erupted as the junta attempts to reclaim the territory using heavy weapons. The KNU has urged Beijing to intervene and pressure the generals to stop.

While low-level workers seek escape routes, senior syndicate bosses are already on the move. According to a Thai border security source, hundreds have paid around US$3,000 each for safe passage to new scam enclaves deeper inside Myanmar, near Mae Ramat or the Three Pagodas Pass.
“They never get caught,” the source said, requesting anonymity. “Everybody gets a cut here, directly and indirectly.”
Across the border, new scam operations are reportedly sprouting in Shan state’s Tachileik and abandoned developments around Laos’ capital, Vientiane.
Tower warned that “perpetrator-led crackdowns” might merely scatter the problem. “The real risk is that they spread all over the country and we see the expansion of the problem, not a resolution,” he said.
He added that he welcomed Washington’s recent drive to dismantle the syndicates. A newly formed US “strike force” has been tracing money laundering trails across crypto markets and real estate investments worldwide, in what could become a sustained global effort to shut down the Mekong’s scam economy.


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Thailand

Southeast Asia’s multibillion-dollar scam industry refuses to die: ‘everyone gets a cut’

A woman counts US dollars and Japanese yen banknotes in Phnom Penh. Scam money’s reach extends far beyond the Mekong. Photo: AFP

A convoy of Lamborghinis leaves Bangkok en route to Pattaya. Scam proceeds wash up in the pool villas of Bangkok, the restaurants of Phnom Penh and the supercars of Vientiane. Photo: AFP

A photo circulated on social media in December, and reportedly taken in 2014, shows current Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul (right) with a group of people including South African national “Ben Smith” (third from left). Photo: Facebook/sorrayuth9115

A satellite photo shows the KK Park complex in Myanmar’s eastern Myawaddy township in September before a recent crackdown. The border town opposite Thailand is a notorious cybercrime hub. Photo: Planet Labs PBC / AFP

Scam centre workers and victims sit next to dismantled IT equipment during a crackdown on a scam operation in Shwe Kokko, Myawaddy township, in February. Photo: AFP

What US anti-scam ‘strike force’ means for Southeast Asia’s cybercrime fight

US Attorney Jeanine Pirro points to a text message sent by a scammer as she announces the Scam Centre Strike Force in Washington on Wednesday. Photo: AP

The KK Park complex in Myanmar’s eastern Myawaddy township, a notorious internet scam hub, seen from over the border in Thailand. Photo: AFP

The US Justice Department said scammers based in Southeast Asia were trying to “steal the life savings of everyday Americans”. Photo: dpa

Why South Korea’s Gen Z are falling prey to the scam gangs of Southeast Asia

South Koreans suspected of involvement in cyber scams are seen at Cambodia’s Techo International Airport before being deported on Saturday. Photo: Agence Kampuchea Presse/Xinhua

A suspected scam compound in Cambodia’s Takeo province pictured from the air on October 16. Photo: Reuters

Police officers escort South Koreans who were deported from Cambodia for their alleged involvement in cyber scam operations upon arrival at Incheon International Airport on Saturday. Photo: Yonhap/AFP

Jobseekers browse vacancies at a jobs fair in western Seoul, South Korea, on Tuesday. Photo: Yonhap/EPA

Inside the Chinese-run crime hubs of Myanmar that are conning the world: ‘we can kill you here’

The dock at “Gate 25” north of Myanmar’s Myawaddy township. Even the eight victims who spoke to This Week in Asia about the severe physical abuse they endured inside the compound did not know its true name. Photo: Alastair McCready

A busy market in Mae Sot on the Thailand-Myanmar border. Photo: Alastair McCready

An anti-trafficking sign near the Thailand-Myanmar border warns potential victims not to be “deceived into illegal online working”. Photo: Allegra Mendelson

Smuggled cars await collection on the Myanmar bank of the Moei River, as seen from Thailand. Photo: Alastair McCready

A new building is seen under construction at the KKII (Dong Feng) compound of KK Park in Myanmar on July 1. Photo: Alastair McCready

Buildings pictured on July 2 in Shwe Kokko, a small city of casinos, hotels and KTV rooms that experts says is ground zero of the Myanmar scam trade. Photo: Alastair McCready

Members of the Karen National Union ethnic armed group stand guard with their weapons near the Myanmar-Thai border in 2012. A spokesman for the group denied that any of its leaders were involved in the scam centres. Photo: AFP

China’s Foreign Minister Qin Gang (left) shakes hands with Myanmar junta chief Min Aung Hlaing during a meeting in Naypyidaw on May 2. China remains one of the internationally isolated country’s few patrons post-coup. Photo: Xinhua

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Authorities are seizing assets and raiding compounds, but analysts warn the clumsy crackdown is merely scattering syndicates to new hideouts


Authorities are seizing assets and raiding compounds, but analysts warn the clumsy crackdown is merely scattering syndicates to new hideouts.


Southeast Asia’s multibillion-dollar scam industry refuses to die: ‘everyone gets a cut’

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Authorities are seizing assets and raiding compounds, but analysts warn the clumsy crackdown is merely scattering syndicates to new hideouts

Authorities are seizing assets and raiding compounds, but analysts warn the clumsy crackdown is merely scattering syndicates to new hideouts