From Asia to the World: How Global Scam Networks Are Targeting Us

How Global Scam Centers Became Shadow Financial Superpowers — And What We Can Do to Stop Them

Introduction — Beyond Asia

Southeast Asia’s scam compounds — fueled with liquidity from Chinese capital flight — have become synonymous with industrial-scale fraud, human trafficking, and gray finance. From the infamous enclaves of Cambodia’s Sihanoukville to the lawless border zones in Myanmar and Laos, these semi-sovereign illicit ecosystems extract a staggering toll, primarily targeting people in mainland China through sophisticated scams and coercive trafficking operations. According to Interpol estimates, they feed into a $3 trillion global underground economy each year.

Although these networks are closely linked to Chinese state-led investment flows, they have rapidly evolved beyond Beijing’s effective control, forcing violent yet largely ineffective cross-border crackdowns. Now, these scam syndicates are turning their attention outward — expanding into Africa, Latin America, and ultimately, Western markets. In doing so, they threaten to become not just a regional crisis but a global liquidity parasite, undermining legitimate economies and corroding financial sovereignty worldwide.

Why Africa and Latin America?

Africa and Latin America have become increasingly attractive hubs for illicit financial networks and scam operations — and the reasons are both structural and strategic.

First, these regions offer regulatory weakness and pervasive corruption, creating fertile ground for criminal enterprises. Countries such as Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa in Africa, as well as Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico in Latin America, have seen a rapid rise in scam and laundering infrastructure precisely because local enforcement remains fragmented and often politically compromised.

Second, the rise of new digital middle classes in these regions provides a vast pool of fresh, soft targets. As millions of people come online, often without robust digital literacy or strong consumer protections, they become ideal prey for sophisticated social engineering campaigns and financial fraud schemes.

Third, operating from Africa and Latin America provides distance from Asian enforcement pressure. As authorities in China and Southeast Asia crack down on certain scam and laundering networks, criminal actors strategically shift to jurisdictions with weaker oversight and fewer extradition treaties.

Fourth, these regions enjoy proximity to European and North American markets, combined with linguistic and cultural familiarity (English, Spanish, French). This makes it significantly easier to craft scams that resonate with Western emotional and financial vulnerabilities — whether impersonating local authorities, exploiting charitable causes, or manipulating diaspora ties.

Finally, the emergence of advanced AI tools has dramatically lowered the barrier to entry for these networks. AI allows operators in Africa and Latin America to simulate highly convincing Western identities, tailor emotional manipulation at scale, and automate entire scam ecosystems with precision. This convergence of regulatory gaps, technological capacity, and cultural access creates an almost perfect storm for transnational financial exploitation.

The True Objective: Systemic Liquidity Extraction

The ultimate goal of these networks is not simply small-scale fraud or opportunistic scams — it is the deliberate, engineered siphoning of capital out of vulnerable systems on a massive scale. This is what I call systemic liquidity extraction: large, sustained flows designed to hollow out economic and social resilience from within.

Rather than quick-hit financial crimes, these operations weaken social trust in digital systems, creating long-term skepticism toward online platforms, payment rails, and even centralized financial institutions. By undermining user confidence, they create an environment in which alternative (and often illicit) rails can thrive with less scrutiny.

In a landmark case, North Korea’s Lazarus Group, nearly stole $1 billion from the Bangladeshi Central Bank until their transfers were intercepted by authorities in the Philippines. If hackers can nearly execute a financial crime of this scale, the risk to broader systems is enormous.

At a higher level, illicit networks reinforce the architecture of offshore and shadow liquidity sovereignty — allowing bad actors to control, store, and redeploy value outside regulated channels. A clear example is the Huione case, where payment platforms linked to the Chinese language criminal ecosystem (like Huione Pay) have enabled scam and trafficking groups across Southeast Asia to move billions in illicit proceeds while residing in armed and fortified “scam cities”. By operating in weakly regulated environments and offering integrated messaging, payment and layering tools, Huione effectively creates a private, opaque financial system. The network even helped the Iran-backed Houthis move illicit funds. This shadow sovereignty provides strategic flexibility and covert geopolitical leverage, allowing actors to shape markets, destabilize rivals, and shield assets from enforcement or sanctions.

Chinese criminal syndicates, already deeply embedded in Western underground financial and criminal ecosystems, play a central role in this extraction strategy. The most prominent example is their extensive role in laundering money for Mexican drug cartels, but there are many others — including seemingly niche operations like illegal baby eel smuggling on Canada’s East Coast. Over years, these networks have built cross-border laundering structures ranging from casino junkets and underground banks to large-scale e-commerce fraud, giving them direct access to Western liquidity. Their operational maturity allows them to move funds quickly and invisibly into offshore havens, fueling both private enrichment and broader state-aligned objectives. Should these networks become intertwined with expanding global scam operations, their ability to siphon from their host societies would become even greater.

Finally, aging Western societies are particularly susceptible to these scam-driven extraction economies. Older populations often hold disproportionate liquid wealth and are more vulnerable to targeted social engineering, especially as loneliness and digital illiteracy compound emotional susceptibility. As demographic trends continue to skew older across Europe and North America, the scale of potential liquidity siphoning — and corresponding social destabilization — will only grow.

Why Current Responses Fail

Today’s regulatory and enforcement responses are fundamentally reactive, designed to address individual scams or laundered transactions rather than dismantle the systemic financial scaffolding that enables them.

For example, in Australia, banks shut down fewer than 13,000 mule accounts last year despite over 100,000 being exploited. A mule account is a bank account controlled by an intermediary who moves illicit funds on behalf of criminal networks, making it harder for authorities to trace and seize core assets. In another example, in the US, despite losing an estimated $44 billion annually to “pig-butchering” scams, regulators have focused on freezing individual accounts rather than dismantling the networks enabling Chinese syndicates to exploit U.S. bank accounts at scale. Pig butchering is an especially pernicious and increasingly common form of scamming where perpetrators emotionally groom their victims over time, often through romance or investment schemes, before manipulating them into transferring large sums of money into fraudulent platforms controlled by criminal networks.

These examples illustrates a focus on surface-level symptoms rather than dismantling the underlying laundering networks. Instead of treating these networks as strategic threats to economic sovereignty, they are managed as isolated criminal or compliance issues. There is no global framework capable of addressing the structural nature of these transnational scam and laundering hubs. Multilateral efforts target symptoms — not the liquidity networks sustaining them.

According to the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) July 2025 report (where I am cited several times), 69% of jurisdictions face major or structural deficiencies in countering terrorist financing — even as vulnerabilities continue to multiply. Similarly, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s (UNODC) annual report highlights that global responses remain fragmented and reactive, targeting individual cases rather than dismantling cross-border laundering infrastructures.

Finally, weak regulatory regimes have little incentive to change, as these shadow flows often bolster local elites, provide off-books revenue streams, and help maintain fragile patronage systems. In the absence of a fundamental shift in how we perceive this burgeoning parasitic financial ecosystem, many more will inevitably fall prey to it worldwide.

Closing Warning

These scam centers are no longer merely regional nuisances; they are mutating into global economic pathogens. Left unchecked, they will embed themselves as sovereign liquidity parasites, quietly draining our societies from within — hollowing out social trust, weakening regulatory legitimacy, and siphoning capital at scale.

There is still a way to stop them — but it requires a complete shift in how we see them. We must recognize these networks as strategic infrastructure threats, not just criminal annoyances, and move toward dismantling their liquidity architecture as a core element of national and economic security strategy.

Inner Circle Tier Exclusive:

The Liquidity Kill Switch: Designing the Doctrine to Dismantle Global Fraud Hubs and Terrorist Finance Networks

There is still a way to stop them — but it requires a complete shift in how we see them. We must recognize these networks as strategic infrastructure threats, not just criminal annoyances, and move toward dismantling their liquidity architecture as a core element of national and economic security strategy.

In my upcoming briefing, exclusively for Inner Circle Tier members, I will provide:

• Tools to economically disarm scam centers at scale, cutting off the oxygen that keeps them alive.

• A detailed breakdown of integrated kill switch strategies — spanning financial rails, digital infrastructure, and on-the-ground physical choke points.

• Discover real-world incentive levers to compel host governments to act, even when local elites benefit from scam economies.

• A practical roadmap designed for policymakers, regulators, and private compliance teams looking to move beyond reactive enforcement and toward systemic disruption.

• Built on original, FATF-cited research and hard operational realities — not theoretical white papers.