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AI is helping scam operations produce more convincing messages, impersonate people, and evade detection—but it has not made human labor obsolete. The headline global figure is an estimate of victims’ losses, not a precise count of criminal revenue or profit. And while Bloomberg framed those losses as exceeding some valuations of the global cocaine trade, the available sources do not provide a like-for-like cocaine estimate to verify that comparison.
What does the $442 billion estimate measure?
The Global Anti-Scam Alliance (GASA) estimated losses across 42 countries over the twelve months ending March 2025. The Congressional Research Service (CRS) summarized that estimate in 2026. It is a measure of reported or estimated losses to scams—not a direct accounting of what criminal groups earned, kept, or moved through laundering.
That distinction matters. Scam activity is illicit and underreported, and the estimate has a defined country and time scope; it should not be presented as a precisely measured total for every scam worldwide. The cocaine comparison is Bloomberg’s framing. The sources summarized here do not establish a comparable cocaine-market estimate or show that the two figures were calculated on the same basis.
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| Estimate | Geography and period | What it measures | Source and qualification |
|---|---|---|---|
| $442 billion | 42 countries; twelve months ending March 2025 | Estimated scam losses | GASA estimate, as summarized by CRS in 2026; not criminal revenue or profit |
| $88.3 billion–$114.1 billion | East Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand; 2025 | Estimated regional scam losses | UNODC estimate, reported by CRS and CNA in 2026; a different geographic scope and estimate from GASA’s |
| At least $10 billion | United States; 2024 | U.S. losses to scams based in Southeast Asia | U.S. government estimate reported by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) in 2026 |
The USCC said U.S. losses in 2025 were projected to have grown further; that projection is not a confirmed total. These figures cannot be added together or treated as competing estimates: their regions, periods, and underlying measures differ.
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How is AI changing scam operations?
In a March 5, 2026 brief, the USCC said scam centers are rapidly adopting AI to increase scale and sophistication and to evade traditional detection. The brief describes AI-generated personas and tailored content in multiple languages for romance scams, fake job offers, and fraudulent investment firms. It also recounts a voice-cloning scam in which a victim believed a call was from her daughter.
The USCC quoted the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) saying generative AI is “significantly amplifying the scale” of scam operations, enabling one scammer to defraud people at a scale that previously would have required a team. AI can help produce and adapt persuasive material; that does not mean a bot conducts every interaction or that the people behind a scam have disappeared.
AI can support recruitment as well as fraud
The USCC says scam centers primarily use AI to enhance human scammers rather than replace them. It also reports that AI-assisted social-media scraping and more realistic fake job advertisements can help recruit vulnerable people into the operations. In other words, AI can affect both the scam directed at a victim and the recruitment pipeline that supplies labor to a center.
What happens inside scam compounds—and who is forced to work there?
Many large-scale operations are associated with compounds where multiple criminal activities and scam teams can operate together. But “worker,” “trafficking victim,” and “forced scam operator” are not interchangeable terms: reported circumstances vary. CRS notes that some people reportedly join and can leave, while others are deceived, abused, and confined. Some of the people carrying out scams are themselves trafficking victims held against their will.
CRS reported that the UN estimated as many as 300,000 people from 66 countries were in the scam workforce in early 2025. That is a workforce estimate, not a finding that every person counted was trafficked. Separately, CRS reported that INTERPOL identified trafficking victims from 80 countries in online scam centers by late 2025. Those figures describe different things and should not be conflated.
The USCC also describes the operations as interconnected, with AI-enabled recruitment complementing criminal networks that handle tasks such as fraud, trafficking, and laundering. CNA quoted Delphine Schantz, UNODC Regional Representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, describing the model as “corporate franchising” with specialised departments connected in a service-based network.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Where are scam operations spreading beyond Southeast Asia?
CRS identifies Myanmar (also called Burma in some U.S. government usage), Cambodia, and Laos as principal Southeast Asian hubs. It also describes operations in places including Dubai, Sri Lanka, Ukraine, Colombia, Namibia, Nigeria, and South Africa. The USCC’s March 2026 update points to emerging clusters in the Pacific Islands, South Asia, the Middle East, and West Africa, as well as small-scale operations inside China that target foreigners.
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What the figures and expansion do—and do not—show
Taken together, the estimates and geographic reporting point to a large, adaptable illicit business that uses technology to improve its reach while continuing to depend on human activity. They do not establish a single, precisely measured worldwide total of scam-industry revenue, a directly comparable cocaine-trade value, or one uniform compound model. Keeping those limits clear is essential when describing both the financial scale and the human cost.
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