Somewhere in Southeast Asia, a warehouse full of trafficked workers is running romance scams on your relatives. And business is booming.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime released its “Transnational Organized Crime Threat Assessment for South-East Asia 2026” on July 21, estimating that victims across East Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand lost between $88.3 billion and $114.1 billion to online scams in 2025 alone. To put that in perspective, $114 billion is roughly the GDP of Morocco. Gone in a year. To pig-butchering schemes and fake investment platforms.

That number is approximately three times higher than what UNODC estimated just two years earlier, when regional cyber-fraud losses sat somewhere between $18 billion and $37 billion for 2023.

Where the money disappears

The geographic breakdown tells an interesting story. East Asia bore the brunt, accounting for roughly 71% of all financial losses. Australia and New Zealand absorbed between 15.8% and 20.2% of the damage. Southeast Asia itself, despite being ground zero for the operations, only represented 8.4% to 13.2% of victim losses.

The UNODC labels Southeast Asia the “global epicenter” for these operations. These aren’t lone wolves with laptops. They’re industrial-scale operations utilizing trafficked foreign labor, advanced artificial intelligence tools, and sophisticated financial networks that blur the lines between fraud, human trafficking, and money laundering.

The report identifies a strategic migration pattern: as law enforcement cracks down in traditional hotspots like Myanmar and Laos, syndicates relocate to jurisdictions where corruption runs deeper and enforcement runs thinner.

Crypto’s uncomfortable role

USDT, Tether’s dollar-pegged stablecoin, surfaced prominently in the UNODC’s findings as a preferred settlement method and money laundering tool for these syndicates.

The UNODC report describes a convergence between cyber-fraud operations and other criminal enterprises, all sharing financial infrastructure and illicit networks. The syndicates have built parallel financial systems that connect fraud proceeds to money laundering pipelines, with stablecoins serving as connective tissue.

What this means for crypto investors

A UN report quantifying $114 billion in annual scam losses, with cryptocurrency explicitly named in the laundering infrastructure, gives regulators worldwide fresh ammunition. Expect intensified pressure on stablecoin issuers to implement more aggressive compliance measures, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region.

The convergence of AI tools with organized crime operations adds another layer of complexity. These syndicates are adopting generative AI capabilities, deploying them to create more convincing scams at greater volume.