A relative asks you to lend them a few thousand euros; a doctor from an NGO contacts you via social media; you’re asked to pay a fee to claim a package… Scams are on the rise and becoming increasingly sophisticated.
Amid the billions generated by these scams, a response is taking shape. On 21 September, a meeting on the subject was organized by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) during the UN General Assembly, attended by government representatives as well as private-sector actors such as Nasdaq, Meta, and Mastercard.
No single country can combat a global threat on its own
Southeast Asia has become a global hub for organized cyberfraud, whose destructive capabilities are amplified by AI. In addition to Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and the Philippines, more and more countries are being affected by this scourge.
“National fraud has risen at an alarming rate”, stated Lương Tam Quang, Vietnam’s Minister of Public Security. “Criminal networks are becoming increasingly agile, decentralized, and difficult to detect. A single criminal network can operate in one country, use its technology in another, transfer funds across multiple jurisdictions, and inflict losses across several continents. (…) No single state can protect itself against this global threat.”
Europe is not spared
“The global scale of the problem is becoming increasingly clear”, stated UNODC and the European Union in a call for urgent and coordinated international action on 30 July, during the World Day Against Trafficking in Persons.
“By late 2025, victims identified came from nearly 80 nationalities. While Southeast Asia remains a major hub, the model is spreading to the Middle East, Africa, Eastern and Southeastern Europe, South Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean. No region is immune.”
Research has shown that a drug cartel, for instance, has hired hackers to gain access to the information technology systems of the Antwerp port in Belgium that housed data about containers. In Italy, members of Camorra and ‘Ndrangheta were arrested for their role in an Internet gambling ring.
Together, UNODC and the EU support countries across Africa, Asia, the Middle East and South America by training investigators, prosecutors and other criminal justice professionals to dismantle criminal networks, identify victims and ensure they can access justice and support services.
Billions of dollars siphoned off by criminal networks
In a world where 74% of the population has access to the Internet, no country is immune to phishing scams, “deep fakes,” manipulation of all kinds, and cryptocurrency scams.
Losses due to fraud amount to $500 billion a year and are getting worse due to the use of AI by “bad guys” (criminals), explained Edward Knight, Executive Vice Chairman of the Nasdaq Board of Directors.
Between 2021 and 2026, victims in Singapore—a city with a population of 6 million—lost $3 billion.
In the United States, these losses are on a different scale. “We estimate that Americans lost at least $18.2 billion in 2025 to fraud schemes organized from Southeast Asia,” said David Bedard, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs at the State Department, during the meeting. This amount is equivalent to the GDP of Laos or the total tourism revenue of Egypt.
“Over the past 10 months, we have blocked $938 million in cryptocurrency fraud originating in Southeast Asia, seized 503 websites, and alerted 9,000 Americans in real time as they were being scammed.”
In the United Kingdom, organized fraud—regardless of its origin—accounts for 47% of all crimes and is projected to cost $19.2 billion annually by 2025.
Crime in general costs Latin America and the Caribbean 3.4 percentage points of GDP, noted Eduardo Vergara, head of the Division of Citizen Security and the Alliance for Security, Justice, and Development at the Inter-American Development Bank. Fraud in particular “has provided criminals with a business model.”
Solutions: Political Will at the National Level
National determination and political will are key, several participants noted. David Bedard emphasized that this will exists in Washington, while acknowledging that the United States has not yet “succeeded” in overcoming the challenges posed by organized fraud.
“In Singapore, an Anti-Fraud Center brings together the police, the banking sector, and Internet service providers, who can act more quickly when they work side by side to freeze accounts,” explained Boon Yian Ng, Director of International Organizations at Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The United Kingdom, for its part, adopted an anti-fraud strategy in March 2026. “We will invest $333 million over the next three years in the fight against fraud,” said Helen King, the United Kingdom’s ambassador to the United Nations Economic and Social Council.
As in Singapore, a new Center on Cybercrime will enable public and private partners to share information in real time to prevent fraud more quickly.
Similarly, the United Kingdom supports international cooperation, notably through Interpol’s working group dedicated to financial crime.
International Cooperation: The Second Essential Key
David Bedard, the U.S. representative, highlighted the successes of international cooperation. “In May, the FBI organized a week-long operation in Bangkok to disrupt fraud networks, in cooperation with 10 countries, Meta, Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Coinbase.”
More than 150,000 fraudulent accounts were shut down during this operation, according to Meta. “We found scripts written in dozens of languages, targeting people all over the world. That’s why our response must be global,” David Bedard continued.
Thailand, affected by human trafficking operated by fraud centers in neighboring countries, has also organized a response based on cooperation and partnerships.
Since February 2025, Bangkok has repatriated 13,700 people from 49 countries who were victims of forced labor in fraud centers located in neighboring countries, in cooperation with embassies, international organizations, and civil society.
“Information sharing and international cooperation” are crucial for Thailand, said Pinsuda Jayanama, Director-General of the Department of International Organizations at the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Cooperation with the private sector is essential
Banks, big tech companies, and internet service providers are also part of the solution. The fight against fraud involves detecting and removing suspicious content, noted Scott Swantner, Meta’s global director of law enforcement collaboration.
In the first half of 2026, Meta removed 65 million suspicious ads and deleted 16 million fraudulent accounts on Facebook and Instagram. Meta supports the public-private partnership approach advocated by the UN, but makes no secret of the fact that combating fraud is proving to be very difficult.
“The main obstacle is that the accounts we remove en masse reappear,” Scott Swantner continued. “Malicious actors with extraordinary resources are able to factor enforcement into their production costs and adapt very quickly.”
What the UN is doing
The United Nations continues to document the exponential increase in organized fraud and to warn of its human rights implications. The UN is actively working to establish an international framework to address new forms of crime.
The United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, also known as the Palermo Convention, was adopted by the UN General Assembly on November 15, 2000, and ratified by nearly all UN member states.
The United Nations Convention against Cybercrime, the first comprehensive global treaty aimed at preventing and combating ICT-related crime, was adopted on December 24, 2024, by the UN General Assembly.
It has been signed by more than 80 countries and ratified by three states (Vietnam, Qatar, and Azerbaijan), said Monica Juma, Executive Director of UNODC. The number of formal ratifications must reach 40 for the Convention to enter into force.
A Global Fraud Summit was held in March in Vienna, under the auspices of UNODC and Interpol, to encourage greater cooperation among authorities, the private sector, and civil society. No fewer than 140 private companies participated, and a call to action was signed.
“If there is one lesson above all to take from the Global fraud summit, it is that the fraud landscape has become more connected, so we must connect our responses too – across sectors, borders, countries and regions. Let us now walk that path together, for a world where criminals find it harder to commit fraud, and the victims are better protected”, stated Monica Juma.