Rising cyberscam losses expose gaps in EU response
Europeans are losing billions to online scams, yet the EU has been slower than the US, the UK and China in targeting the Southeast Asian
Europeans are losing billions to online scams, yet the EU has been slower than the US, the UK and China in targeting the Southeast Asian networks behind many of them. A landmark study on cyberscams in Europe released this week has found that 75% of adults encountered a scam in the past year. While 71% of respondents said they were confident in recognizing scams, 8% of those exposed went on to interact with scammers. Some 16% of parents said their children had been approached by a scammer. Across the European countries surveyed, around €50 billion ($57.7 billion) has been lost to scams in the last 12 months, according to the study by the Global Anti-Scam Alliance (GASA), a nonprofit organization that polled around 22,200 people across 15 European countries. Of those who interacted with a scam, 22% suffered a financial or data loss, yet only 39% reported the incident to authorities. The average financial loss was $2,735 (€2,369), with the highest average losses recorded in Switzerland, Denmark and Belgium. GASA's report estimated scam losses in Germanywere about €10.6 billion over the past 12 months. Some 35% of those who reported their losses said their money was reimbursed by the organization they reported it to. "Scam avoidance is largely driven by habitual behaviors, such as ignoring unsolicited messages, rather than intervention," the GASA report noted. "Half of victims only realize they have been scammed after external intervention or after losing money," it added. Southeast Asia's scam factories Although the GASA report did not identify how many European victims were targeted from Southeast Asia, the region has become a major hub for cyberscamming in recent years. In 2024, the United States Institute of Peace estimated that the cyberscam industry could be worth nearly €11 billion ($12.7 billion) annually in Cambodia, roughly half of the country's formal GDP.
Including scammers in Myanmarand Laos, these syndicates may be stealing more than €37.9 billion annually. In April 2025, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime estimated that the region's industrial-scale scam centers were generating almost €34 billion in annual profits. Scam factories in Myanmar: Cyber slavery To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video The scam industry was not the only factor in the deadly Thailand-Cambodia border crisis that erupted in 2025. However, Bangkok has repeatedly framed scam compounds across the border as a national security threat. Authorities in Thailandhave linked border restrictions and supply cutoffs in efforts to disrupt illegal scam centers in Cambodia. Many of the cyberscam networks in the region appear to be run by Chinese criminal groups, although the growing sums being stolen from Chinese citizens have made crackdowns a priority for Beijing. China has applied considerable pressure on actors in the Myanmar civil war to act against scam compounds, even as analysts warn that crackdowns often displace rather than dismantle the networks. Beijing has pressured Cambodia to also deport Chinese-born alleged scammers, including Chen Zhi, to stand trial back at home. Europe trailing US in anti-scam actions Washington has gone much further than Brussels to address the issue. Last October, the US Treasury, working with the UK, sanctioned 146 targets linked to the Cambodia-based Prince Group, one of the country's largest conglomerates, which Washington designated as a transnational criminal organization. The same month, the US Justice Department indicted Prince Group chairman Chen Zhi, a former advisor to Cambodia's prime ministers, over alleged forced-labor scam compounds and filed what it called its largest-ever forfeiture action, involving around $15 billion in bitcoin.
The BriefWire