Scam centres run by Asian organised crime outfits appear to have set up on Australia's doorstep, exploiting areas with relaxed regulations to expand their lucrative illegal operations and money laundering fronts.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has issued an alert about the emergence of triad-linked scam centres in Timor-Leste after a raid at a hotel in its Special Administrative Region of Oecusse-Ambeno in late August.

The scam operations industrialised in South-East Asia during the past five years have been estimated to cost victims about $60 billion each year .

In Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos, mostly Chinese criminals have been running call-centre style scam operations, often from walled compounds in remote areas .

With the help of AI real-time deepfake face-

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