Is this the end for South East Asia's scam centres?
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 796 Ratings
🗓️ 25 November 2025
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It’s one of the biggest human trafficking operations of modern times. Scam centres across South East Asia have been making hundreds of billions of dollars annually, it’s estimated, conning people into fake crypto-currency investment schemes.
But now these centres could be coming under threat, with both military and legal moves by global enforcement challenging their apparent impunity.
Presented and produced by Ed Butler
(Picture: An aerial photo showing the KK Park complex in Myanmar, taken in September 2025. Credit: Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:06.4 | Hi there, I'm Ed Butler. Welcome to Business Daily from the BBC World Service. Today, |
| 0:12.1 | dramatic new accounts of what's going on inside Southeast Asia's multi-billion dollar scam industry. |
| 0:19.8 | Buildings have been coming under attack, |
| 0:22.1 | allowing thousands to flee these criminal compounds. |
| 0:26.2 | We've had accounts of hundreds, if not thousands of people now |
| 0:29.7 | leaving the scam centres and making their way throughout villages. |
| 0:34.5 | Many have accounted that they are now hiding throughout the villages in people's |
| 0:38.5 | homes. What's behind the latest developments is concerted international pressure turning the tide |
| 0:45.7 | on a criminal network. Now you have more and more countries that have been pulled into this, |
| 0:51.0 | that are being harmed by this, that are calling out and demanding that something |
| 0:54.9 | be done about it. |
| 0:56.0 | Oh, the latest military and legal moves, all they really appear. |
| 1:01.1 | That's Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 1:05.4 | It's very bad, sir. |
| 1:07.0 | I mean, no one deserve the treatment that they're getting right now. |
| 1:12.3 | They are forcing to work to scam people for 18 hours, only limited food. |
| 1:19.6 | This woman's story reflects that of thousands of people trapped inside what's become a globalised criminal industry. |
| 1:28.0 | She asks us not to identify her for her family's safety. |
| 1:32.2 | Her sister left their home in the Philippines one year ago |
| 1:36.0 | to take up what she thought was a job in a Thai call centre. |
| 1:40.0 | She ended up forced to scam people using fake cryptocurrency schemes. |
... |
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