Investigating the Cyber-Scam Industry in Southeast Asia
By Aung Khant Si Thu – Lead Researcher, Myanmar Team
In May 2025, the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) released a landmark investigative report titled Compound Crime: Cyber-scam operations in Southeast Asia. As the Lead Researcher for the Myanmar team, I contributed frontline research and field-based insights into how Myanmar has become a key node in the region’s rapidly evolving cyber-scam economy.
The report exposes how organized crime networks exploit territorial fragmentation, political instability, and law enforcement gaps to operate scam compounds across Southeast Asia. In Myanmar, particularly, these operations are deeply intertwined with armed actors and transnational trafficking networks. My role involved gathering testimonies from victims, collaborators, and local stakeholders, as well as analyzing the structures that enable such operations to flourish with impunity.
This publication is part of a broader effort to document the human cost and structural complexity of cyber-enabled crime, which continues to affect thousands across the region.
