UK steps up crackdown on Southeast Asia scam network

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LONDON - The UK has frozen assets including a central London penthouse as part of a growing crackdown on a network of "vile" scam centres operating across Southeast Asia, the government said Thursday.

Largely concentrated in Southeast Asia, the global cyberscam industry has reached "industrial proportions", with estimates of its annual revenues as high as $64 billion, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.

Some of the hundreds of thousands of people carrying out scams in the region are trafficked and held against their will.

Countries across the world have been seeking to crack down on the network.

The latest British measures include an asset freeze on a £9-million ($12-mn) penthouse in Westminster in central London.

They build on action taken by the UK and the US last year against Chinese-born Cambodian tycoon Chen Zhi and his Prince Group conglomerate, who are responsible for a "huge network" of scam centres, the foreign ministry said.

Chen was arrested in January and has been extradited to China, which has repatriated thousands to face trial and earlier this year executed at least 15 people linked to compounds in Myanmar.

The latest British sanctions target operators of #8 Park, believed to be Cambodia's largest scam compound, as well as Xinbi, a Chinese-language cryptocurrency marketplace used to sell stolen personal data to fraudsters.

Previous action froze a £100 million City of London office block, two multimillion-pound mansions and a helicopter.

Stephen Doughty, a junior foreign minister, said the measures send a "clear message".

"We will not allow British people to become victims of these dreadful scams or tolerate the awful human rights abuses perpetrated in these scam centres," he said.

"We must keep up the pressure on dirty money and those who benefit from it."