More evidence of #scam centre response cooperation intensifying & importantly bringing in key impacted countries beyond #SoutheastAsia - as a global challenge this will require globally coordinated solutions. Great to see increasing process in that direction www.nationthailand.com/blogs/news/p...

🛠 Piloting frontline tools like the Screening and Referral Toolkit in airports. 🤝 Expanding secondments and peer-to-peer exchanges. 🛜 Creating platforms like the Regional Information, Liaison and Outreach Network (RILON) Initiative to support whole-of-route action.

Challenges in addressing irregular migration, people smuggling and human trafficking challenges are growing in scale and complexity. With challenges, come opportunities to enhance regional cooperation and innovation.

Join #OSCE & @baliprocessrso.bsky.social for a webinar series (22–24 Sept) on risks & responses related to #AI and #TraffickingInPersons: 🔹 22 Sept (Civil society & academia): buff.ly/DJCwsge 🔹 23 Sept (Private sector): buff.ly/Pwsu7a3 🔹 24 Sept (Gov’ts & policy makers): reach out for link

New RSO supported report on illicit #financial flows + cyber-#scam centres now online! Have thoughts on improving responses? It'd be great to connect with practitioners, policymakers & private sector partners working on this. Please get in touch if you have ideas or would like to discuss further!

New RSO supported report on illicit #financial flows + cyber-#scam centres now online! Have thoughts on improving responses? It'd be great to connect with practitioners, policymakers & private sector partners working on this. Please get in touch if you have ideas or would like to discuss further!

🚨 NEW RESEARCH Cyber-scam centres in Southeast Asia generate billions annually — targeting victims worldwide and exploiting trafficked workers. Many have evolved into transnational networks linking fraud, trafficking, money laundering, and illegal gambling. 📖 tinyurl.com/y4rnzmx2

Yesterday's Policy Hackathon w/ @Meta & ASEAN-Australia Counter Trafficking 🇦🇺 provided a unique platform to discuss cyber-scam centre response directly with Thai 🇹🇭 youth, having their insights inform prevention efforts & strategies for flagging suspicious job posts on #SocialMedia

PAKISTAN: Authorities arrest 149, incl. 48 Chinese, 8 Nigerian, 6 Bangladeshi, 4 Filipino, 2 Sri Lankan, 2 Myanmar, 1 Zimbabwean, in raid on factory in Faisalabad. Report indicates they ran investment scams and also engaged in hacking & other cybercrimes. www.dawn.com/news/1922894...

Big news for the counter cyber-scam centre effort today, with a warrant issued for Kok An in #Thailand #Cambodia #ScamCentres #OrganizedCrime www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/gen...

After a recent court order, OpenAI is now required to retain the very data many of its users believed to be most private. This introduces serious privacy risks, especially for vulnerable users like victims and survivors of domestic violence, Belle Torek writes.

How do cyber-scam centres actually operate — and why are they proving so difficult to address? This new report from #GITOC offers one of the clearest pictures to date, detailing how these operations are structured, sustained, and expanding across the region🧵 📘: globalinitiative.net/analysis/com...

How do cyber-scam centres actually operate — and why are they proving so difficult to address? This new report from #GITOC offers one of the clearest pictures to date, detailing how these operations are structured, sustained, and expanding across the region🧵 📘: globalinitiative.net/analysis/com...

An op-ed by RSO Co-Managers Fuad Adriansyah (Indonesia) and David Scott (Australia) published in the @Diplomat_APAC today discusses the devastating human cost of legal invisibility for individuals, and champions the momentum for change in #SoutheastAsia. Read the full op-ed here: buff.ly/RYr2LjX

📢 One week left to apply! The RSO is recruiting for a new Programme Manager (International Migration Strategies) to lead the establishment of a senior policy group on irregular migration in the Andaman Sea. ⏰ Apply before 8 June: buff.ly/DvKPsG0

💡In order to develop information campaigns & public messaging to prevent individuals from undertaking dangerous #irregular journeys, it is crucial to understand how persons at risk of #irregular migration & their origin communities perceive (irregular) migration, & their #informationneeds

✈️ Last week, the RSO participated in the #BudapestProcess Working Group meeting on Returns & Reintegration, in Istanbul, Turkiye—as part of a long-standing relationship between the RSO & the Budapest Process, & recognising overlapping memberships & challenges for the Budapest and Bali Processes

How can understanding the drivers and consequences of irregular migration help strengthen investigations into serious crime? RSO presented to law enforcement officers at the IMOSC XVIII Programme, drawing on the findings of an assessment on Community Perceptions and Information Needs.

Come work with our Transnational Crime and Technology Programme! Exciting role will work w/ myself, social media platforms & law enforcement to develop a toolkit focused on electronic evidence sharing, improving content moderation & supporting collaboration in trafficking investigations.

📢 New job alert! The RSO is recruiting for a new Online Platforms Toolkit & Research Consultant, who will map & analyse content moderation policies & provide insights on good practices for content moderation to reduce transnational organised crime online. 🔗 More info: tinyurl.com/yc55cscx

Come work with our Transnational Crime and Technology Programme! Exciting role will work w/ myself, social media platforms & law enforcement to develop a toolkit focused on electronic evidence sharing, improving content moderation & supporting collaboration in trafficking investigations.

If you’re not familiar, skilled North Korean developers have been finding freelance work at, and infiltrating, Western companies for years using false personas They send their wages back to Pyongyang to help fund North Korea’s nuclear weapons and sanctions evasion. There are thousands of IT workers

The RSO is recruiting for a new Programme Manager (Information Sharing & Regional Responses). The Consultant will lead on engagement to support establishment of 2 cross-border networks, supporting regional cooperation on maritime people smuggling. ⏰ Apply before 22 May 🔗 More info: buff.ly/TMGw757

Call for applications now online for new PM position at the RSO. Come join the team! 🤝

Cambodia is the likely global epicenter of cyber-scam operations in 2025. And this isn’t simply a story of a hapless state where criminal entrepreneurs have exploited “governance gaps.” Ruling party elite patronage networks are deeply enmeshed with the scam industry. buff.ly/KSXI7z5

Nothing to worry about, folks. Just repainting. cambojanews.com/huione-pay-r...

🤝 The RSO met with Ruwanthi Delpitiya, Acting Director General of East Asia & International Security Cooperation Division at Sri Lanka's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

With trafficking for forced criminality & cyber-scam centres increasingly impacting #SouthAsia 🌏 it’s important that responses are coordinated cross-regionally and that lessons learned Southeast Asia are shared to other Bali Process Members

With trafficking for forced criminality & cyber-scam centres increasingly impacting #SouthAsia 🌏 it’s important that responses are coordinated cross-regionally and that lessons learned Southeast Asia are shared to other Bali Process Members

While in Colombo, Sri Lanka, the RSO met with Controller General of Department of Immigration and Emigration in Sri Lanka, & colleagues including former secondees to the RSO. Discussions highlighted strong partnership between Sri Lanka & RSO, & trends related to trafficking for forced criminality

🚨 Last call for applications! Tomorrow is the final day to apply for the Programme Manager for Countering Trafficking in Persons position with the RSO in Bangkok, Thailand. Don’t miss your chance to join our team! 🔗 Apply here: thailand.iom.int/sites/g/file...

📢 New job alert! The RSO is on the lookout for its new Programme Manager, Countering Trafficking in Persons. ⏰ Apply before 30 April 2025, Bangkok time 🔗 More info and how to apply: bit.ly/4cxAjAK

Happy Songkran from the RSO! We wish everyone a joyous Songkran and a healthy, happy, and prosperous New Year.

An OSINT workshop recently held by the RSO in Bangkok equipped law enforcement from across Southeast Asia with open-source intelligence (OSINT) skills to detect, investigate, & disrupt cyber-scam centre recruitment networks & investigations into a range of related crimes. More: buff.ly/RHfFHqo

RSO's @winchry.bsky.social met w/ Luong Le, Director of the ATIP Dept. at Blue Dragon to learn about their work supporting local collaboration between law enforcement & CSOs, good practices in #TIP data collection & victim services offered by @bluedragonchildren.bsky.social in #Vietnam

The devastating March 28 earthquake was the largest to hit central Myanmar since 1839.

🧵Sri Lanka continues efforts to counter trafficking of citizens to scam centres in Southeast Asia via its National Anti-Human Trafficking Task Force, Embassies & Consulates. RSO met w/ Amb.Wijayanthi Edirisinghe, discussing release of 14 Sri Lankans from Myanmar & RSO's OSINT workshop in Colombo 🤝

1/🧵The RSO 2025 Members' Engagement Function in Bangkok brought together Bali Process membership, partners and Royal Thai Government officials to strengthen connections and support cross-border cooperation. ▶️ Read more here: rso.baliprocess.net/rso-2025-mem...

Day 3: Focus on fraudulent job ads—how traffickers recruit for cyber-scam centers. Officers learning advanced search, "dorking" & multilingual OSINT across social media platforms 🔍 Great to see participants sharing platform-specific techniques and popular job sites from their countries.

Day 2 and already seeing participants discuss using #OSINT techniques with active cases they're working on 🔍 Good to see practical exercises generating discussion and the regional connections being formed. Excited to see where we get to by Friday! 💻

The RSO's technical workshop on countering trafficking into cyber-scam centres is underway in Bangkok. Officers from across ASEAN have gathered to enhance investigative capabilities through open source intelligence (#OSINT) techniques 🕵️‍♀️

The RSO participated in Thailand's Second Modern Slavery Conference, which brought together government interlocuters, international organisations, civil society, and the private sector, highlighting efforts to counter forced labour, and to protect its citizens from situations of exploitation.

Freedom and democracy are always worth fighting for. Slava Ukraini.

NEW: Elon Musk’s Starlink is being used at scam compounds that have fleeced billions from people around the world, a @WIRED investigation shows Between November 2024 and Feb, hundreds of phones at eight scam compounds in Myanmar logged 40,000 uses of Starlink, mobile data shows

NEW: “Elon Musk’s Starlink is installed above all the buildings in the campus where we are now. Now the fraud work is running normally," a human-trafficking victim wrote. A WIRED investigation into reports of criminals running multibillion-dollar empires across Southeast Asia using Starlink:

Important documentation of how trafficking in persons, violence & coercion remains central to #ScamCentre operations Its essential that those forced to commit criminal acts are ID'd as victims of trafficking & able to access services, particularly supporting their return home & reintegration #TIP

The dismantling of USAID by Elon Musk’s DOGE and a State Department funding freeze have severely disrupted efforts to help people escape forced labor camps run by criminal scammers.

Dhaka, Bangladesh: Last week the RSO engaged in a series of meaningful discussions with the Embassy of Indonesia and the High Commission of Malaysia to Bangladesh, centred around human trafficking and people smuggling challenges impacting Bangladesh and the broader region. #RegionalCooperation

For the past year, I've been investigating the global rise of online scams - a predatory, multi-billion dollar industry that rivals the size of the illicit drug trade. Scam Inc, a new 8-part podcast from The Economist and hosted by me, is out in February: econ.st/3CoAdxJ