Introduction The headquarters of the scam economy have always been elusive, shifting between countries, towns and cities like a shadow. Western Africa, once heralded as a hotbed for digital fraud operations, has now been superseded by Southeast Asia, where hundreds of major scam centres are scattered. The operations of these criminal groups transcend the digital world, securing land to build cities and special economic zones dedicated to crime operations. They’ve set up sophisticated money laundering and human trafficking networks dedicated to staffing operations across Southeast Asia, including scam bases in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and the Philippines. The epidemic is named sha zhu pan, known in ...