Where scams run from
Some scam types have a documented physical geography, and pretending otherwise makes the pages useless. Every hub on this map is placed there by a named public document — a Treasury designation, a Justice Department indictment, or a UN report — and carries the citation.
What this map is and is not
It shows criminal enterprises and the territories where they have found protection. It is not a statement about nationalities, and it is not a claim about the people who live in these places. In several of the hubs shown, the workforce is largely trafficked: the UN's 2026 report estimates at least 300,000 people from 66 countries have been drawn into these operations, many of them held against their will.
It is also dated. Enforcement relocates operations rather than ending them, and the same UN report records the industry spreading to Pacific Island countries, South Asia, the Gulf States, West Africa and the Americas. Each hub below carries the year it was documented.
The hubs, and what places them there
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Shwe Kokko, Karen State
Named by the US Treasury in its September 2025 designations as a hub for virtual currency investment scams, under the protection of the designated Karen National Army.
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Sihanoukville
Named in the same Treasury action; two designated compounds, the Golden Sun Sky Casino complex and the K B Hotel complex, are located there.
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Bavet
Named in the US Treasury's September 2025 designations.
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Pursat Province
Named in the US Treasury's September 2025 designations.
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Prince Group compounds
The October 2025 US indictment charges the chairman of Prince Holding Group with operating forced-labour scam compounds across Cambodia; the associated forfeiture covers roughly 127,271 bitcoin.
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Mekong border special economic zones
The UN OHCHR's 2026 report places 74% of all scam compounds in the Mekong sub-region, including in remote border areas and special economic zones.
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Philippines
The UN OHCHR 2026 report records people trafficked into scam centres in the Philippines between 2021 and 2025, and a February 2025 intervention in Pasay City that released over 400 people.
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United Arab Emirates
Three defendants in the April 2026 coordinated scam-centre takedown were apprehended in Dubai; the UN report also records trafficking into scam operations in the UAE.
The regions they target
- United States — A US government estimate put American losses to Southeast Asia-based scam operations at at least $10 billion in 2024, a 66% increase on the prior year. Source
- Canada — Investment fraud is the largest single loss category in Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre data. Source
- United Kingdom — UK Finance recorded £221.5m of APP investment fraud losses in 2025, up 40%. Source
- Australia — Investment scams produced A$837.7m of combined reported losses in Australia in 2025. Source
- Singapore
- Japan
- Germany
- Netherlands
- India
- New Zealand
Why geography matters here
Most fraud advice treats scams as weather: they happen, be careful. They are not weather. They are run by organisations, from places, under conditions that make those places viable — weak enforcement, an armed group taking a cut, a special economic zone with its own rules, a supply of people who can be trafficked into the work. That is why enforcement actions look the way they do: sanctions on land-owners and electricity suppliers, not just arrests of people at keyboards.
It also explains why the same scam arrives in the same words in six languages. The scripts are centrally produced. Recognising one version generalises to the rest, which is the practical payoff of reading a page like pig butchering rather than a list of warning signs.