More than 1,800 people have been arrested in a major anti-scam operation across seven Asian jurisdictions, including Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, the Maldives, and Macao, authorities announced on Tuesday.
The coordinated crackdown, which ran through late May, targeted online shopping scams, phone fraud, fake job offers and investment schemes. Police froze nearly 33,000 bank accounts and intercepted $20 million in fraudulent funds, said Wong Chun-yue, chief superintendent of Hong Kong's Commercial Crime Bureau.
One of the more sophisticated cases involved a finance director in Singapore, who was tricked by deepfake videos posing as the CEO of a multinational company. The victim wired nearly $500,000 to Hong Kong in March. Thanks to cross-border cooperation, authorities were able to recover the funds, said Aileen Yap from Singapore’s anti-scam command.
Authorities noted that scam operations often exploit both victims and workers. Many recruits are lured under false pretenses, then forced to work under threat and poor conditions, according to a recent UN report.
The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime warned that transnational scam syndicates have been rapidly expanding across East and Southeast Asia, especially in remote or border areas of Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, and the Philippines. These syndicates frequently relocate to evade police, using fake romances, investment pitches, and gambling apps to target victims worldwide.
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Disruption in the Strait of Hormuz has increased the strategic importance of Bab al-Mandab, raising fears that instability in both waterways could trigger a wider global energy and trade crisis.
Flights at Catania airport in Sicily will remain suspended until early Friday as ash from Mount Etna continues to disrupt air travel, following hundreds of cancellations and diversions over the past week.
Iran says the Strait of Hormuz remains under its control, rejecting U.S. President Donald Trump’s claim of “total control” over the strategic waterway and insisting it will not reopen until Washington fulfils its commitments under an interim deal.
Iran and the United States remain at loggerheads over efforts to agree a permanent end to the war in the Gulf, according to a senior Iranian source who said there had been no progress in talks to revive the interim deal agreed in June and define a timeframe to implement it.
Russia has accused Ukraine of threatening global grain supplies after recent strikes on Black Sea agricultural infrastructure, while Moscow carried out a new overnight attack on Ukraine’s major Danube port of Izmail.
Record rainfall in Japan killed eight people and stranded thousands of travellers at Tokyo's Narita Airport on Friday, as flooding disrupted transport and cut power to 20,000 homes.
Start your day informed with AnewZ Morning Brief. Here are the top news stories for the 14th of August, covering the latest developments.
Hundreds of flights have been cancelled or rerouted at Catania Airport over the past week as ash from Mount Etna’s ongoing eruption continues to disrupt air travel in Sicily.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC) Ebola outbreak has spread to a sixth province. A man died of the virus in Bas-Uélé in the north, the African Union’s health agency said.
At least 437 civilians were killed and 2,610 injured in Ukraine last month, according to UN investigators, marking the highest monthly civilian casualty toll since March 2022.
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