Thailand conference launches international initiative to fight online scams

BANGKOK — Thailand on Thursday helped launch a global effort to fight the spread of online scams that include criminal enterprises based largely in Southeast Asia estimated to bilk billions of dollars annually from victims around the world.

Thailand's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime hosted a conference in Bangkok on Wednesday and Thursday culminating in the announcement of the new initiative called the Global Partnership Against Online Scams.

Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said in his keynote speech Wednesday that online scams ''reveal a deeper problem — a collective vulnerability that no country can address alone.''

The partnership agreement signed by conference participants Thailand, Bangladesh, Nepal, Peru and the United Arab Emirates will include political commitment, law enforcement, victim protection and public awareness and cross-border collaboration, a statement said.

The conference received assistance from the private sector including internet giants Meta and TikTok.

Meta, the corporate owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, presented a threat report underlining the increased use of artificial intelligence by scam networks and protocols the company is using in its attempts to stop scams on its social media platforms.

Social media application TikTok signed on to the conference's closing statement, becoming one of the first private sector members of the partnership.

Scam centers, which extort money from victims online through bogus investment schemes and faked loved interests, have proliferated across Southeast Asia. Scam victims lost between $18 billion and $37 billion in 2023, the UNODC estimates.

The importance of private partnerships in anti-scam initiatives was stressed throughout the two-day conference in Thailand's capital, which was attended by more than 300 participants from nearly 60 countries.

Brian Hanley, Asia-Pacific director of the Global Anti-Scam Alliance, which TikTok joined this month, explained it will be harder to combat criminal networks without ''all the major stakeholders at the table."

''Scams are exploiting, not only transnational boundaries, but also the seams across various platforms from banks, telcos, to social media platforms,'' Hanley said.

The alliance describes itself as a collective effort to combat the scam problem by governments, law enforcement, consumer protection organizations and companies involved in social media, cybersecrity and other aspects of the internet.

Recent scam center raids in Myanmar, victim repatriation issues in Thailand and the death of a South Korean student forced into scam work in Cambodia have spurred demand for regional action.

Cambodia is known as a hub for scam compounds and has been criticized by its neighbor Thailand, but the two countries are engaged in an armed conflict and Cambodia was not represented at the conference.

Similar pledges to fight scam networks were made by members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in the months leading up to the Bangkok conference.