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At an international anti-fraud convention in Singapore this week, even seasoned professionals discovered how easily they could be duped.
Attendees were invited to scan a QR code to “skip the queue” — more than 50 did so, only to learn they had fallen victim to a staged demonstration of “quishing”, or QR phishing.
The stunt underscored the uncomfortable truth: nobody is immune to increasingly sophisticated scams.
GASA
South-East – the world’s fraud capital
According to the Global Anti-Scam Alliance (GASA), cybercriminals now extract an estimated $1 trillion annually from victims worldwide.
South-east Asia has emerged as the epicentre of this underground economy.
Scam compounds in Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos, often run with trafficked labour, target victims across the globe. The region’s prominence is so great that US officials believe these centres account for as much as two-thirds of American scam losses each year.
The threat is not confined to individuals.
Singapore police data show reported scams rose 70 per cent in 2024, while GASA’s regional survey found 63 per cent of consumers had been targeted within six months, most commonly by phone, text or social media.
Fraudsters exploit the ubiquity of platforms such as Facebook and TikTok, where lax oversight allows criminal tutorials and deceptive features to circulate widely.
Generative AI
What sets the current wave apart is the accelerating role of artificial intelligence.
Generative AI is enabling fraudsters to create convincing phishing messages tailored to an individual’s style of speech, social media posts or images.
Deepfake video and audio tools add another layer of deception: last year, a Hong Kong executive at UK engineering group Arup authorised a $25mn transfer after fraudsters digitally cloned a senior colleague’s voice and image.
Businesses face additional risks from techniques such as “subdoMailing”, in which criminals exploit subdomains of legitimate companies to send phishing emails. Guardio Labs has identified more than 8,000 firms — from eBay to CBS — targeted in this way.
The rise of remote work has compounded the exposure, as employees rely more heavily on digital communication channels.
The personal costs are equally severe.
Sextortion schemes, in which young people are coerced into sharing compromising images and then blackmailed, have been linked to over 50 suicides in the past four years.
Despite the perpetrators’ online visibility, few are prosecuted, leaving victims without redress.
Technology companies, banks and cyber-security providers are responding with fraud detection and anti-money-laundering tools.
Yet industry insiders admit that the battle resembles an arms race. As Rajat Maheshwari of Mastercard observed in Singapore: “While we talk of what tech can do to combat fraud, scamsters are meeting in their own forums on the dark web, learning the same tricks.”
The lesson from Singapore’s cautionary exercise is clear: if even the experts can be fooled, vigilance must extend far beyond the security community.
Combating the world’s fastest-growing criminal industry will demand constant adaptation, cross-border co-operation, and recognition that technology is both the problem and the solution.
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