The rapid growth of digital technologies across Southeast Asia has created new opportunities for economic growth, connectivity, and innovation, but it has also generated new forms of transnational criminality. Among the most troubling developments in recent years has been the emergence of cyber scam centres and the associated phenomenon of cyber-enabled trafficking, or cyber slavery. Across parts of Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos, systemic oversights and regulatory gaps have enabled organised criminal networks to establish sophisticated operations that combine human trafficking, forced labour, cyber-enabled fraud, money laundering, and other forms of organised crime[1]. People from around the globe are recruited through fraudulent employment offers and subsequently trafficked into compounds where they are subjected to confinement, violence, coercion, and forced labour, often compelled to partake in online scams targeting victims worldwide.
This criminal ecosystem has grown rapidly. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimates that victims across East Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand lost between US$88.3 billion and US$114.1 billion to online scams in 2025, compared with between US$18 billion and US$37 billion in 2023[2]. The human cost is equally significant. The UN Human Rights Office estimates that at least 300,000 people are working in scam operations across Southeast Asia, many of whom have been trafficked and subjected to forced labour and other forms of abuse[3]. As such, cyber slavery represents a particularly complex manifestation of transnational organised crime because its human and technological dimensions are deeply intertwined.
The physical exploitation of trafficked individuals sustains digital criminal enterprises that operate through social media platforms, encrypted messaging applications, cryptocurrency networks, and other financial and technological infrastructure. At the same time, the geographical location of scam compounds does not necessarily match the location of the perpetrators or their victims. Criminal networks can recruit in one country, operate from another, move illicit funds through multiple jurisdictions, and target individuals worldwide. The model has also begun to spread beyond its original Southeast Asian hubs. As of March 2025, victims from 66 countries had been trafficked into online scam centres, while approximately 74 percent of identified trafficking victims had been brought to centres in Southeast Asia and approximately 90 percent of trafficking facilitators were identified as being from Asia[4]. This geographical fragmentation creates significant challenges for law enforcement agencies, financial regulators, and governments seeking to identify, disrupt, and prosecute such networks.
The growth of these operations has coincided with the broader expansion of cyber-enabled financial fraud. Digitalisation and the growing use of online banking, digital payments, and financial technologies have amplified the scale and reach of fraudulent activities. Investment scams, phishing, impersonation, cryptocurrency fraud, and other forms of social engineering can now cross borders with relatively little physical infrastructure. For instance, ‘pig-butchering’, where scammers build a fake romantic or friendly relationship with a victim over weeks or months before tricking them into investing in fraudulent cryptocurrency schemes, is a common occurrence[5]. As a result, scam centres in Southeast Asia have become part of a wider global ecosystem of cyber-enabled financial crime, connecting organised criminal networks with victims, intermediaries, and illicit financial flows across jurisdictions.
For Southeast Asia, this convergence of cybercrime and human trafficking presents a multidimensional governance and security challenge. The rapid growth of digital economies has not always been accompanied by equivalent institutional capacity to address emerging forms of cyber-enabled organised crime. Differences in national legislation, law enforcement capabilities, digital regulation, and victim-protection mechanisms can create gaps that criminal networks exploit. The transnational nature of these operations further complicates investigations and prosecutions, particularly where criminal enterprises span jurisdictions with differing legal and institutional frameworks. Effective responses therefore require cooperation beyond conventional cybersecurity measures, encompassing human trafficking, financial intelligence, immigration, law enforcement, and victim rehabilitation.
The issue is particularly significant for India. Indian citizens are among those trafficked into scam compounds in Southeast Asia, while also increasingly being targeted by cyber-enabled financial fraud originating from or linked to the region. Indeed, nearly 48 percent of financial fraud affecting Indian citizens originates from scam operations based in Southeast Asia[6]. The rescue and repatriation of 6,998 Indian nationals from scam centres in Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia between 2022 and 2025 has highlighted the human security dimensions of the problem[7]. These developments demonstrate that cyber slavery cannot be treated solely as an overseas trafficking concern or that cyber fraud can be addressed only as a domestic cybersecurity issue. The two are increasingly connected through the same transnational criminal ecosystem.
The growing use of emerging technologies is further complicating this landscape. Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly being used in scam operations, including generating convincing fake job advertisements used to recruit trafficking victims and to create deepfake images and profiles for sextortion, romance scams, and other forms of social engineering[8]. As these crimes proliferate and become more sophisticated, the need for robust policy and institutional responses is increasing. This includes stronger domestic cybersecurity and law enforcement capabilities, as well as intelligence sharing, financial tracing, digital forensics, cross-border investigations, and coordinated disruption of criminal infrastructure. Cooperation between computer emergency response teams, financial intelligence mechanisms, and early-warning systems can strengthen states’ capacity to detect and respond to rapidly evolving cyber-enabled threats.
At the same time, effective responses to cyber slavery must place greater emphasis on the identification, rescue, protection, and rehabilitation of trafficked individuals, recognising them as victims of coercion rather than merely participants in criminal activities. This requires closer coordination between governments, law enforcement agencies, diplomatic missions, international organisations and civil society. Regional cooperation is therefore central to addressing the cybercrime–cyber slavery nexus. Existing mechanisms within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and other regional and multilateral frameworks provide avenues for cooperation, but differences in institutional capacity and national approaches continue to present challenges. For India, deeper engagement with Southeast Asian partners is particularly important given the growing digital and economic interconnectedness between the two regions. Cooperation on cybersecurity, law enforcement, financial intelligence, trafficking, repatriation, and capacity building can lead to a more comprehensive regional response.
Against this backdrop, this GP-ORF volume, Southeast Asia’s Cybercrime–Cyber Slavery Nexus: Implications for India, brings together perspectives from researchers, practitioners, journalists, and subject-matter experts to examine the changing landscape of cyber-enabled organised crime and its human consequences. The compendium seeks to move beyond treating cybercrime and human trafficking as separate policy challenges and instead examines how they intersect, reinforce one another, and create new vulnerabilities across borders.
The first section, ‘Understanding Cybercrime and Cyber Slavery in Southeast Asia: Trends, Networks, and Humanitarian Impact’, brings together contributions that examine the evolution, geographical spread, and human consequences of cyber scam operations across the region. Abhishek Sharma maps the expanding geography of scam compounds and offers a broader view of the regional ecosystem in which these operations function. Next, Dario Migliorini’s journalistic account captures the harsh reality on the ground and includes photographs from field visits. Isabela Velasco Pons explores the relationship between informal economies, migration vulnerabilities, and the networks that facilitate cyber slavery. Ankur Yadav and Naresh Kumar Verma examine India’s evolving cybercrime landscape and its connections with scam operations based in Southeast Asia. In the final essay in this section, Shouvik Guha analyses the legal and jurisdictional complexities involved in responding to crimes that span multiple national and legal jurisdictions.
The second section, ‘Responses and the Way Forward: National, Regional, and Multilateral Approaches to Addressing Cyber Slavery and Cybecrime’, shifts the focus towards institutional responses, emerging technologies, and pathways for regional cooperation. Soumya Awasthi examines India’s regulatory framework and institutional mechanisms for addressing cyber-enabled crime. Next, Pranoy Jainendran considers how AI is shaping cyber fraud and the governance mechanisms required to respond to these emerging threats. Shrabana Barua examines institutional and policy gaps that constrain effective responses across the two regions, while Ros Sayumphu assesses Cambodia’s efforts to address cyber slavery through a socio-technical perspective. Next, Fitriani explores the relationship between scam compounds, governance, digital authoritarianism, and transnational criminal networks in Southeast Asia. Finally, Rahul Mishra considers the opportunities to strengthen regional cooperation within ASEAN and develop more coordinated responses to the cybercrime–cyber slavery nexus.
Read the volume here.
Endnotes
[1] United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), “Forced to Scam: Inside One of the Fastest-Growing Forms of Human Trafficking,” July 2026, https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/frontpage/2026/July/forced-to-scam_-inside-one-of-the-fastest-growing-forms-of-human-trafficking.html.
[2] “UNODC: Southeast Asia Scam Networks Cost Victims Up To $114 Billion,” Migrant Times, July 22, 2026, https://migrantimes.com/statistics-reports/22-07-2026/unodc-southeast-asia-scam-networks-cost-victims-up-to-114-billion.
[3] Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), “A Matter of Survival: The Human Cost of Cyber Scam Operations in South-East Asia,” February 20, 2026, https://www.ohchr.org/en/stories/2026/02/matter-survival-human-cost-cyber-scam-operations-south-east-asia.
[4] Interpol, “INTERPOL Releases New Information on Globalization of Scam Centres,” June 30, 2025, https://www.interpol.int/News-and-Events/News/2025/INTERPOL-releases-new-information-on-globalization-of-scam-centres.
[5] Gargi Sarkar and Sandeep Kumar Shukla, “Cyber Slavery Infrastructures: A Socio-Technical Study of Forced Criminality in Transnational Cybercrime,” arXiv, October 2025, https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.12814; “Unmasking the ‘Pig Butchering’ Scam: A Modern Slavery Crisis,” Not for Sale, February 28, 2025, https://wearenotforsale.org/human-trafficking/pig-butchering-scam/.
[6] Ashutosh Mishra, “Southeast Asian Nations Account for Half of Financial Frauds in India: MHA,” Business Standard, May 22, 2024, https://www.business-standard.com/india-news/southeast-asian-countries-account-for-half-of-financial-frauds-in-india-124052201617_1.html.
[7] “Nearly 7,000 Indians Rescued from Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos Cybercrime Compounds since 2022: Centre,” Scroll.in, February 6, 2026, https://scroll.in/latest/1090539/nearly-7000-indians-rescued-from-cambodia-myanmar-laos-cybercrime-compounds-since-2022-centre.
[8] “INTERPOL Releases New Information”.
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