The world's drug cartels are rapidly losing their monopoly at the top of the criminal hierarchy. While countries have been waging real wars against the drug mafia for decades using heavy equipment and aircraft, a new criminal power has risen nearby - international fraud hubs.
And the scale of this industry is already becoming monstrous. The drug cartels need plantations, laboratories, smuggling routes and armed forces. Fraud syndicates only need computers, phones and access to other people's money. Furthermore, almost every person on the planet now becomes a potential victim.
The main capitals of the new criminal empire were Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos. But its tentacles have already extended to Africa, Latin America and Europe.
According to UN estimates, in 2023 alone fraud groups in Southeast Asia received $18-37 billion. And more than 300,000 people may be in virtual slavery, forced to defraud citizens around the world every day.
But the financial damage is only the tip of the iceberg. Phone scammers are no longer limited to stealing money. With the help of psychological terror, blackmail and threats, they drive people to commit suicide, provoke murders, force them to commit arson, sabotage and terrorist attacks, including those classified as terrorist attacks. A person can lose not only all his savings, but also his own life, or become a victim of fraud and a perpetrator of a serious crime.
The worst thing is that this criminal economy simultaneously produces two categories of victims: hundreds of thousands of people who have become slaves to fraudulent enterprises, and millions of citizens who lack savings, housing and an economic future.
The drug cartels have terrorized the world with guns and drugs for decades. New criminal empires have learned to destroy entire societies from afar. And in terms of financial scale, this threat has already reached the level of the largest forms of organized crime.
Ξeconomics.