Southeast Asian Online Scam Centers Extract Billions from Unsuspecting Americans
Leila Goldstein reported that illegal online scam compounds in Southeast Asia—operating like tech campuses with phone farms and scripted romance-to-crypto investment lures—defraud unsuspecting Americans out of an estimated $10 billion per year.
personLeila GoldsteinpersonJason TowerpersonSang HyangpersonJacob SimscompanyAT&TcompanyT-MobilecompanyGlobal Initiative Against Transnational Organized CrimecompanyHarvard
The tape
2 quotes
“Unsuspecting Americans fall for those scams to the tune of an estimated 10 billion dollars per month.”
Kai Rizdahl
“What they're trying to do is to get people to make investments in some sort of a crypto trading app, right? A fraudulent crypto trading app.”
Jason Tower
Heard on Marketplace — “Your 401(k) is probably invested in AI”, published Friday, October 23, 2026. Heardvine summarizes and quotes with attribution and timestamps, and links to the original everywhere.