E-Paper
FATF reports India’s action against scam compounds in Southeast Asia
FATF said the “industrial-scale scam compound model” rapidly expanded from around 2020 in Southeast Asia
Prefer HTon Google
India’s specialised cyber-crime centre was able to geo-locate a scam compound in Cambodia using open source operation, leading to the rescue of 81 Indian nationals trafficked by the criminals operating the scam, according to a new report by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).
The report, released on Thursday, highlights the steps being taken by the financial watchdog to combat illicit financial flows linked with scam compounds, many of them located in Southeast Asian countries. FATF said the “industrial-scale scam compound model” has rapidly expanded from around 2020, resulting in annual losses estimated in the tens of billions of US dollars.
In one case involving Indian nationals trafficked to a scam compound in Bavet, the largest city in Cambodia’s Svay Rieng province, the Indian embassy in Phnom Penh worked with the Indian Cyber Crime Co-ordination Centre (I4C) to locate the compound, according to the report.
“In late 2025, a public SOS from Indian nationals held in a Bavet scam compound was detected by the Indian embassy, which established contact with the persons concerned and tasked I4C to geolocate the site using open source information,” the report said. “Escalation to Cambodian authorities led to the rescue of 81 Indian nationals over two days.”
The government informed Parliament in February that 6,998 Indian nationals had been rescued from scam compounds in Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos during 2022-2025. While responding to a question, minister of state for external affairs Kirti Vardhan Singh said “dubious firms” were linked to fake recruitment offers to lure Indians to these three countries to “carry out cyber crime and other fraudulent activities from scam centres”.
Singh also said at the time that the exact number of Indians “stranded in these countries is not known” as they reach scam centres “on their own volition” through unscrupulous recruitment agents and illegal channels.
The FATF report said debriefings of 15 Indian nationals repatriated from scam compounds in Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar during 2023-2024 identified common recruitment, trafficking and operating patterns. “The persons had been recruited for purported high-paying customer-service or IT jobs, generally transported through Thailand and subsequently coerced into scam activity,” it said.
Cases involving Laos identified sub-agents facilitating onward transfers to inland sites, while the cases in Myanmar involved compounds in conflict-affected locations, the report said.
Recruitment fees of ₹50,000 to ₹70,000 (about $560 to $780), which were paid in cash or online, “contributed to debt bondage”, the report said. The debriefing of the Indian nationals generated information on compound locations, trafficking routes, coercion methods and the “scam typologies victims were required to conduct”.
The cases reported by India showed that human resource functions, including salary payments and IT and physical set-up were performed within the scam compounds, while recruitment of trafficked persons, illegal payment gateways, SIM sourcing, cross-border calling through SIM-box operators, cash-to-VA conversion and data brokerage were outsourced.
FATF highlighted the role of I4C, saying it operates an integrated platform architecture spanning victim reporting, financial intervention, infrastructure disruption and inter-state law enforcement co-ordination.
The Citizen Financial Cyber Fraud Reporting and Management System (CFCFRMS), a digital platform launched in 2021 and integrated with the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal, connects cyber-fraud complaints with financial institutions, payment aggregators, e-commerce platforms and virtual asset service providers to facilitate real-time money-trail identification and asset tracing and freezing.
