As digital scams explode in Southeast Asia, including so-called “pig slaughter” investment scams, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) issued a comprehensive report report this week with a dire warning about the rapid growth of this criminal ecosystem. Many digital scams have traditionally relied on social engineering, or tricking victims into giving away their money voluntarily, rather than resorting to malware or other highly technical methods. But researchers have increasingly sounded the alarm that scammers are incorporating AI generative content and deepfakes to expand the scale and effectiveness of their operations. And the UN report offers the clearest evidence yet that these high-tech tools are turning an already urgent situation into a crisis.
In addition to purchasing scripts written to use with potential victims or relying on templates for malicious websites, attackers have increasingly relied on generative artificial intelligence platforms to create communication content in multiple languages and deepfake generators that can create photos or even videos of non-existent people to show. victims and increase verisimilitude. Scammers have also been expanding their use of tools that can empty a victim’s cryptocurrency wallets, have been manipulating transaction records to trick targets into sending cryptocurrency to the wrong places, and are compromising smart contracts to steal cryptocurrency. And in some cases, they have been purchasing Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet systems to help boost their efforts.
“Agile criminal networks are integrating these new technologies faster than anticipated, driven by new online marketplaces and service providers that have boosted the illicit services economy,” UNODC regional analyst John Wojcik told WIRED. “These advances have not only expanded the scope and efficiency of fraud and cybercrime, but have also lowered the barriers to entry for criminal networks that previously lacked the technical skills to exploit more sophisticated and profitable methods.”
For years, criminals linked to China have trafficked people to giant complexes in Southeast Asia, where they are often forced into scams, held against their will and beaten if they refuse instructions. Around 200,000 people, from at least 60 countries, have been trafficked to complexes mainly in Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos over the past five years. However, as WIRED reporting has shown, these operations are spreading globally, with scam infrastructure emerging in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Latin America and West Africa.
Most notably, these organized crime operations have run pig slaughter scams, in which they establish intimate relationships with victims before presenting an “investment opportunity” and asking for money. Criminal organizations may have scammed people in the surrounding area $75 billion through pig slaughter scams. In addition to pig slaughter, according to the UN report, criminals across Southeast Asia also carry out employment scams, law enforcement impersonations, asset recovery scams, virtual kidnappings, sextortion, loan scams, breach of commercial emails and other illicit schemes. Criminal networks in the region earned up to $37 billion last year, UN officials estimate. Perhaps not surprisingly, all this revenue is allowing fraudsters to expand their operations and diversify, incorporating new infrastructure and technology into their systems in the hopes of making them more efficient and brutally effective.
For example, scammers are often limited by their language skills and their ability to hold conversations with potentially hundreds of victims at a time in numerous languages and dialects. However, advances in generative AI over the past two years (including the release of writing tools like ChatGPT) are making it easier for criminals to break language barriers and create the content needed to scam.
