THE raid last week on a scam farm in Makati City, which led to the arrest of 100 people, indicates that former Philippine offshore gaming operators, or POGOs, continue to operate despite the president's decree to banish them.The ex-POGOs have dropped online gaming, which had given them legitimacy, and now concentrate on internet fraud.They have also downsized, abandoning the huge complexes they had built for smaller, less conspicuous sites, making them harder to ferret out.But scam farms are not endemic to the Philippines; it is a malaise that has spread across Southeast Asia.The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) considers the region as the 'ground zero' of the global scamming industry.Running this vast cyberfraud network are transnational crime syndicates headed by former Chinese internet gambling tycoons who were forced out of business when China closed down online casinos.The groups' biggest operation is in the Golden Triangle in the Mekong region, which encompasses parts of Thailand, Laos and Myanmar. They have turned the Shan State in eastern Myanmar not only into a gambling haven, but a center for cyberfraud and human trafficking.Shan State's workforce is made up mainly of Asian nationals — including Filipinos — who were hoodwinked by promises of legitimate, good-paying jobs.Those who managed to escape said they were virtual slaves, forced to operate various types of digital scams, and subjected to beatings and torture if they failed to meet their quotas of money scammed from victims.The same dismal conditions were replicated in the POGO sites in the Philippines that were infiltrated by the syndicates. The criminal activity in the POGO centers is what prompted President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to order them to be dismantled and their foreign workers deported.The UN drugs and crime agency said cyber farms have been converted into 'criminal service providers by selling cybercrime, scamming and money laundering services, but also data harvesting and disinformation.'By UNODC's estimates, between $7.5 billion and $12.5 billion are lost yearly to scam farms in the Mekong region alone.But more worrying is the fact that fast-evolving technology, like artificial intelligence (AI), will create new opportunities for scammers.'AI expands the scope and the scale at which a scam farm can operate. You're not going to need a thousand people to run scams on a text-based cell phone; you just need a well-programmed application to do it for you,' UNODC said.Lance Wu, a research officer at the Asean Studies Center, ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, agrees that advanced digital technology has 'accelerated criminals' ability to scam victims and finance illegal operations under the radar. These tools and their new modus operandi allow cyber scams to evolve faster than law-enforcement agencies can adapt.'The Philippines may have dealt a heavy blow on cyber fraud by shutting down POGOs, but the syndicates have the resources to keep their operation here going. Their 'guerrilla tactics,' including using hotels, restaurants and resorts as fronts, enable them to play a cat-and-mouse game with authorities.Still, the Philippine government has shown the will to fight online scammers, the UN agency noted. The next step is for countries in the region to put up a united response against fraud factories.'The more countries work together, share expertise and information, and the more countries in the region also receive support from countries elsewhere in the world and organizations like UNODC, the better they can be prepared to address this issue,' the UN agency said.Another UN organization, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, is urging Southeast Asian governments to strengthen the rule of law and tackle corruption in order to 'break the cycle of impunity' that allows scam farms to thrive.Some Asean member states are moving in this direction. Aside from the POGO crackdown in the Philippines, Singapore has opened a 24/7 anti-scam hotline, Malaysia has activated a National Scam Response Center, and Vietnam has developed an anti-scam mobile application.With cyber scams continuing to evolve, Southeast Asia must intensify cross-border cooperation if it is to win the fight against the region's fraud factories.
