Web and artificial intelligence, how scams exploit technology

Leveraging frailties has become easier, for the ill-intentioned all over the world, thanks to technology and artificial intelligence. Love scams are just one of the many sides of this disturbing coin. This is highlighted by the annual UN report on global organised crime.

In Europe, according to the report, among the frauds committed with the aid of technological means, the most frequent are company e-mail address compromise, financial fraud and love fraud. With regard to the financial aspect, AI is used, for instance, to create videos deepfakes portraying public figures. In romance scams, on the other hand, victims are contacted on social media, gaming sites or messaging apps via fake profiles, with which the scammers pose as people of a similar age. After the unfortunate person on duty has shared compromising pictures, he or she is blackmailed: the only way to prevent the material from being disseminated is to pay a sum of money, send a gift or transfer cryptocurrency. These are the so-called sextortion, sex extortion.

Very often, large-scale cyber crime operations are concentrated in large physical sites - located in weakly jurisdictional territories, such as border areas controlled by armed groups - where thousands of operators carry out different types of fraud. One example is the 'scam factories' of the Southeast Asia, where the boundary between victims and perpetrators is rather blurred: in some cases, the perpetrators are themselves trafficking victims. These persons, whose passports are confiscated, are confined and forced to interact with social users. Sometimes, there is even a number of people to contact every day. Elbow to elbow with them also work those who participate voluntarily.

Although it is difficult to precisely define the contours of this phenomenon, various sources (police reports, court documents, testimony of survivors) indicate that it may be widespread. Most victims of trafficking in South East Asian scam centres come from the region, but cases of people from South and Central Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe and Latin America have been documented. The UN estimates that in 2023 alone, scams against people in South East Asia and East Asia embezzled between USD 18 and 37 billion. A significant portion of this sum would be attributable to fraud committed in the organised crime centres of South East Asia. This business model, the studies point out, is also spreading rapidly to other parts of the world, such as Africa, South America and the Pacific. In particular, there are centres in West Africa where sextortion schemes are being implemented.

The personal data of victims often become, in cases of online scams, a central asset for cyber criminals' operations because they can be used in other fraudulent activities, such as phishing. The response, the UN emphasises, must be global: if organised crime moves into the digital space, the international community must develop strategic responses to counter the misuse of technology. The response, then, must be cohesive and unified, even at the transnational level.