The United Nations and Interpol are urging governments and big tech companies to intensify efforts against fraud at the world's first global summit on the issue. 

Meeting in Vienna, officials and CEOs were asked to increase cooperation given the accelerating speed and scale of cyber scams, which create hundreds of billions of dollars in damage each year.

Ilias Chatzis from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) told CGTN that tech companies need to be more open in "sharing information and in developing the frameworks that would allow the law enforcement authorities to act quickly upon information that they receive."

Current fraud operations are highly sophisticated and slick. Victims are no longer just targeted by anonymous emails and phone calls. Some approaches appear to be from their own family members or friends, with the use of fabricated videos and voice recordings.

The UNODC says governments must speed up efforts to combat fraud rapidly, as scams accelerate in speed and scale. The United Kingdom and other member countries hope that by working together with big tech companies like Google, Meta or TikTok they can combat online scammers.

"It's the global tech companies who are supporting the platforms on which this crime is waged," UK ambassador to the UNODC, Lindsay Skol, told CGTN. "And it's the banking sector for example who are bearing the costs economically and our societies as a whole that are being harmed, their economies are being made less resilient through this crime."

Scam factories

Some of the most disturbing examples of cyber fraud are so-called scam factories where victims are trafficked from other parts of the world and forced to commit cyber fraud. Many are located in Southeast Asian countries such as Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos.

According to the UNODC, China is at the forefront of addressing this issue after thousands of citizens have been affected by this, both as those forced to scam and their victims.

"These cyber scams are quite prevalent for countries in Asia and South-East Asia. And that's where for example China has a leading role in these efforts," Chatzis says. 

"They've taken a leadership role within the region and also globally. Because they have felt the results of the scams, Chinese citizens have been defrauded as well, so they have a very important role to play in a critical region for the global fight."

The scam factories are now starting to pop up in other parts of the world, especially in Africa and Latin America. The United Nations and Interpol are hoping China's knowledge of tackling this issue in South-East Asia could help fight this cybercrime across the globe.