A UN report has revealed the Lazarus Group is sharing underground banking networks in Southeast Asia. [image: Shutterstock.com]

Money laundering

The United Nations (UN) has revealed North Korean-state-sponsored hackers are laundering money via underground banks in Southeast Asia. These are also linked to scam casinos and crypto exchanges run by organized crime gangs.

The UN Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) took to X Monday to share its latest report on the staggering scale of Southeast Asia’s crime networks:

According to Reuters, the UNODC stated it had uncovered “several instances” of hackers, including North Korea’s infamous Lazarus Group, sharing underground banking networks and crypto exchanges in the Mekong area, covering Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Thailand.

supercharged” organized criminal networks in Southeast Asia

UNODC Regional Representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, Jeremy Douglas, told Reuters the explosion of casinos and crypto has “supercharged” organized criminal networks in Southeast Asia. Douglas stated it came as no surprise sophisticated threat actors “would look to leverage the same underground banking systems and service providers”

Funds stolen by Lazarus, which the FBI states is under North Korea’s state intelligence bureau control, is a major source of funding for Pyongyang and its nuclear weapons programmes.

Casinos the conduit

The UNODC report stated Southeast Asia’s casinos, junkets, and unregulated crypto exchanges have become “foundational pieces” of the illegal banking structures used by regional organized crime networks.

The reports revealed that casinos have proven “capable and efficient in moving and laundering massive volumes” of cash and crypto. This creates “channels for effectively integrating billions in criminal proceeds into the formal financial system.”

US News & World Report cited the UNODC as stating it had uncovered Lazarus’s activity through analyzing blockchain data and case information. However, an unnamed person at North Korea’s mission to the UN in Geneva said he was “not familiar with the issue” and that previous reports on Lazarus were “all speculation and misinformation.”

According to an FBI report in September 2023, Lazarus had stolen more than $200m since the start of the year. The group stole more than $41m alone from the online casino and gambling website, Stake. Licensed casinos and junket operators in the Philippines were also reportedly key players in the laundering of approximately $81m stolen in a Lazarus hack on Bangladesh’s Central Bank in 2016.

Crime-infested region

The 50-page report also shared harrowing information about human trafficking victims jumping from buildings in Cambodia, Lao PDR, and Myanmar “to escape the ‘scam compounds’ (casinos hotels, guarded buildings) in which they were forced to commit cyber enabled scams and financial fraud.”

In early 2023, the International Organization estimated that crime gangs had illegally trafficked ‘tens of thousands’ of people to work in scam compounds in Southeast Asia.

one of the largest coordinated trafficking in persons operations in history.”

The UNDOC report cited interviewees suggesting that there could be at minimum 100,000 victims of illegal human trafficking in Cambodia alone. If accurate, the report states, these estimates would suggest that “this is one of the largest coordinated trafficking in persons operations in history.”

In August last year, VegasSlotsOnline News reported on the “Garden of Hell” casino complex in Myanmar, in which people are tortured and forced to work in online scam centers.