New Delhi: With enforcement pressure mounting, criminal networks are breaking their Southeast Asia-based scam compounds, which are dens of international cybercrime that fleece victims of over USD 500 billion every year, into leaner and more mobile operations, a latest report from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) said.
In its report released from Paris, the global money-laundering watchdog said large, fortified compounds where cyber slaves were forced to commit financial cybercrimes are being moved to apartments, houses, hotels and office floors, sometimes rebranding as legitimate outsourcing or marketing firms.
The report, in which India was also a participating member, said a drop in visible mega-compounds should not be read as a decline in the networks or the illicit money flowing through them.
The report cited crackdowns by Cambodian agencies on rented rooms, coffee shops and even moving vehicles, while the Philippines cracked down on cybercriminals operating call centres with 20-300 workers from leased floors that can be quickly abandoned in case of a raid.
The FATF said the fortified, large-scale cybercrime compound model expanded rapidly since around 2020, with the onset of Covid, and cited the Global Anti-Scam Alliance, which said global frauds cost about USD 500 billion a year.
Scam compounds have targeted people in more than 100 jurisdictions, including India, the report said.
The compound operators lure vulnerable people from across the world with lucrative job offers, forcing them into cyber slavery in these compounds, where they are made to commit cybercrimes and can face confinement and violence in case of refusal, it said.
The report cited a case involving Indian nationals who had sent an SOS from one such compound in Bavet, Cambodia, last year, following which the Indian embassy swung into action and contacted the victims.
The Indian Cyber Crime Co-ordination Centre, known as I4C, geolocated the site using open-source information. Cambodian authorities were roped in, resulting in the rescue of 81 Indians over two days of operation.
“Debriefings of 15 Indian nationals repatriated from scam compounds in Cambodia, Lao PDR and Myanmar in 2023-2024 identified common recruitment, trafficking and operating patterns. The persons had been recruited for purported high-paying customer-service or IT jobs, generally transported through Thailand and subsequently coerced into scam activity,” the report said.
It said the cases were evenly distributed across the three host jurisdictions. Cases involving Lao PDR identified sub-agents facilitating onward transfers to inland sites, while the Myanmar cases involved compounds in conflict-affected locations.
“Recruitment fees of INR 50,000-70,000 (approximately USD 560-780), paid in cash or online, contributed to debt bondage. The debriefings also generated information on compound locations, trafficking routes, coercion methods and the scam typologies victims were required to conduct,” it said.
India also reported a case showing how criminal networks split up their work. Human resources functions, including salary payments, along with IT and physical setup, were handled inside the compound, the report said.
The report cited the Indian Cyber Crime Co-ordination Centre (I4C), an anti-cybercrime agency under the Ministry of Home Affairs, as a model for national anti-scam efforts.
“The Indian Cyber Crime Co-ordination Centre (I4C) operates an integrated platform architecture spanning victim reporting, financial intervention, infrastructure disruption and inter-State law enforcement co-ordination.
CFCFRMS, integrated with the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal, connects cyber-fraud complaints with FIs, payment aggregators, e-commerce platforms and VASPs through API-based interfaces to support real-time money-trail identification and asset tracing/freezing,” it said.
Sahyog supports VASP data requests and online-content takedown requests, while Samanvaya supports inter-State case linkage and investigative and techno-legal assistance, including a dedicated module covering persons rescued from scam compounds and illegal recruiters, it said.
The report said criminals move money faster than authorities can respond, with illicit funds reaching an exit point in the financial system within three to five minutes in Thailand, while victims take about 20 hours on average to realise they have been scammed.
