In the Fight Against Southeast Asia-based Scam Operations, Greater Protections and Reforms Are Needed

Washington has finally woken up to the scale of the challenge, but there is a lot more it can do to punish perpetrators and support victims.

A satellite image of KK Park, a suspected hub of online scamming operations to the south of Myawaddy, Myanmar, Oct. 2025.

Southeast Asia’s online scam empire is booming, and the West is late to the fight. Sprawling criminal compounds in Myanmar and Cambodia have flourished for years with almost no one held to account, and Washington is finally taking notice. In 2024, the United States reported more than $16.6 billion in internet fraud and scams, according to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center. Experts say a large proportion of the fraud is linked directly to Southeast Asia-based networks, with transnational criminal organizations directly profiting from scamming American consumers.

Most recently, the U.S. has announced up to $10 million in reward money for information leading to the disruption of scam centers in Myanmar’s Karen State. This action underscores that Americans have lost $7.2 billion to scams originating in Southeast Asia in 2025. The same junta, responsible for intimidating civilians in Myanmar, is also making money by defrauding American victims.

The scam centers run on the labor of hundreds of thousands of trafficked workers who are recruited from low-income countries and migrant communities through false advertisements for tech roles or call center jobs. Once ferried across borders, however, many recruits have their passports confiscated and are pressed into servitude running scams.

Myanmar’s scam compounds have multiplied since the 2021 military coup, spreading into junta-backed territory along the border with Thailand, particularly around the town of Myawaddy, and pushing deeper inland. Many have moved away from the Thai border, burrowing into remote corners of Myawaddy Township where they’re harder than ever to reach.

Women bear much of the brunt of the violence inside Southeast Asia’s scam compounds. Lured across borders by recruiters promising legitimate jobs, as customer service reps, translators, and hotel staff, they’re kidnapped on arrival, stripped of their passports, and forced to run online scams under brutal conditions. Those who resist are beaten; starved of sleep, food, and water; or sold between compounds. Sexual violence, extortion, and coercion are routine.

The victims come from across Asia and beyond. Vietnamese and Thai women have been trafficked into compounds along the Cambodia-Thailand border; Ethiopian, Kenyan, and Ugandan women have turned up in the scam hubs on Myanmar’s eastern frontier; Filipinas who answered ads for jobs in Bangkok have ended up in Myawaddy instead. Many never make it out alive.

While U.S. sanctions have targeted the Karen Border Guard Force and the Democratic Karen Benevolent Army for their involvement in online scamming operations, more actions........

© The Diplomat