Ravie LakshmananMar 11, 2026Cybercrime / Artificial Intelligence
Meta on Wednesday said it disabled over 150,000 accounts associated with scam centers in Southeast Asia as part of a coordinated effort in partnership with authorities from Thailand, the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Korea, Japan, Singapore, the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, and Indonesia.
The effort also led to 21 arrests made by the Royal Thai Police, the company said. The action builds upon a pilot initiative in December 2025 that resulted in Meta removing 59,000 accounts, Pages, and Groups from its platforms and six arrest warrants.
“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,” Meta said in a statement. “These operations cause real harm – they upend lives, destroy trust, and are deliberately designed to avoid detection and disruption.”
In tandem, Meta said it’s announcing a number of new tools to protect people when scam-related red flags are detected –
- New warnings on Facebook when users receive suspicious accounts.
- Alerting users when they receive suspicious WhatsApp device linking requests by tricking them into scanning a QR code that would link the scammer’s device to their account.
- Expanded advanced scam detection on Messenger that prompts users to share recent chat messages for an AI scam review when a conversation with a new contact exhibits common scam patterns like suspicious job offers.
The social media giant said it removed over 159 million scam ads for violating its policies in 2025, and that it took down 10.9 million accounts on Facebook and Instagram associated with criminal scam centers. In addition, the company has announced plans to expand advertiser verification in an attempt to bolster transparency and curtail efforts by bad actors to misrepresent advertiser identity.
The development comes as the U.K. government launched a new Online Crime Centre to combat cybercrime, including those fueled by the rise of scam compounds operating across Southeast Asia, West Africa, Eastern Europe, India, and China, by bringing together specialists from the government, police, intelligence agencies, banks, mobile networks, and major technology firms.
The disruption unit is expected to launch operations next month. It also outlines plans to deploy artificial intelligence (AI) to flag emerging fraud patterns, stop suspicious bank transfers faster, and use “scam-baiting chatbots” to deceive fraudsters and gather intelligence.
“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 U.K. government said.
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