Meta Disrupts 150,000+ Accounts Tied to Southeast Asian Scam Centers
Meta said it disabled more than 150,000 accounts tied to scam centers in Southeast Asia after a coordinated operation with law enforcement partners from Thailand, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Korea, Japan, Singapore, the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, and Indonesia. The company added that the effort supported 21 arrests by the Royal Thai Police.
Meta described the criminal networks as increasingly organized. “Online scams have become significantly more sophisticated and industrialized in recent years, with criminal networks often based in Southeast Asia in countries like Cambodia, Myanmar, and Laos running what amount to full-scale business operations,” the company said.
What Meta removed and the new protections
The takedown builds on a December 2025 pilot that Meta said had already removed 59,000 accounts, Pages, and Groups connected to similar schemes. In a broader push during 2025, Meta reported removing more than 159 million scam ads and taking down 10.9 million accounts on Facebook and Instagram that it linked to criminal scam centers.
Meta also announced new user protections intended to catch scam signals earlier:
- Facebook warnings: new alerts when people receive messages from suspicious accounts, Meta said.
- WhatsApp device-link alerts: notices when a sign-in request looks like a trick to link a scammer’s device to someone’s account, Meta said.
- Messenger AI review: expanded advanced scam detection that prompts users to share recent chat messages for an AI scam review when a conversation shows common scam patterns, such as unusual job offers, Meta said.
Meta also said it plans to expand advertiser verification to reduce identity misrepresentation by bad actors.
International action and the U.K. response
The U.K. government announced a new Online Crime Centre aimed at tackling cyber-enabled fraud, including activity from scam compounds operating across Southeast Asia, West Africa, Eastern Europe, India, and China. The government said the disruption unit will combine specialists from police, intelligence agencies, banks, mobile operators, and major tech firms and is due to start operations next month.
On funding and capabilities, the U.K. government said, “Backed by over £30 million in funding, the centre will identify the accounts, websites and phone numbers that organised crime groups rely on, and shut them down at scale – blocking scam texts, freezing criminal accounts, removing scam social media accounts and disrupting operations at source.” The government also outlined plans to use artificial intelligence to flag fraud patterns faster, stop suspicious bank transfers, and deploy “scam-baiting chatbots” to collect intelligence on fraud rings.
Royal Thai Police confirmed that the coordinated operation led to 21 arrests, a sign of closer cooperation between platforms and regional law enforcement in tackling organized scam operations.
For everyday users, Meta encouraged vigilance and said the new alerts and AI checks are intended to give people clearer signals when a contact or ad might be fraudulent. The combined platform and government efforts aim to reduce the reach of scam operations that victims and financial institutions say cause significant harm.
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