‘Countries Don’t Know Their Losses’: Global Scam Alliance Chief Rajesh Maheshwari

In July 2025, it was reported that according to an estimate by the Ministry of Home Affairs, Indians had lost Rs 7,000 crore to online scams in the first five months of the year.

While some of these scams are carried out in India, more than half of this amount was by scammers operating out of countries such as Cambodia, Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand.

The Global Anti-Scam Alliance (GASA) found that global scammers stole over $1 trillion in 2024. While scams are prevalent across the globe, most people or 60% don't report them.

"If you talk about the GDP, it's bigger than many of the countries around the globe," said Rajat Maheshwari, chairman of the GASA Singapore Chapter and senior vice president, strategic growth Asia Pacific at Mastercard.

Also, it isn't easy to catch scammers, as most often, they are not based in the same country as those they are scamming.

In a conversation on The Core Report, Maheshwari also spoke about why scams have grown so much, and what could be done at the policy level to find a solution.

Edited Excerpts:

How big is this problem and how has it grown so fast?

It has raised very quickly; it is becoming a bigger and bigger problem. If you talk about the scale, worldwide, we have lost close to $1.36 trillion. So I'm not talking about billions, it's trillions now.

If you talk about Asia Pacific specifically, last year, close to $660 billion was lost on scams. We recently did a survey for Southeast Asia, and from Southeast Asia alone, we have seen the numbers close to 23.7 billion, which have been lost on scams. So this is the scale of what we are talking about now, it is not like someone losing a few dollars or a few hundred dollars or a few thousand dollars, it's running into billions and trillions now.

If you talk about the GDP, it's bigger than many of the countries around the globe. So this is the scale, this is the problem that we are looking at now. Why has it grown so quickly?

There are many reasons for it, but I would like to highlight three main things that I see. One is definitely the increased digitisation, which means that the area for bad actors to play has become a lot bigger and it's getting bigger and bigger. Imagine in the last 10 years how many people have come onto social media platforms, how many people have got access to mobile devices or even many other kinds of handheld devices.

So this allows bad actors to exploit those mediums, exploit those platforms and then target the individuals. The second one is, of course, with the rise of technology. If you see the way scams have evolved in the last 10 years, previously it was mostly bad actors taking your credentials and then trying to perform the transactions or financial transactions using those transactions.

It came to a point where phishing or smishing kind of attacks happen, where you get an SMS or message, and then you act on that. Then comes the malware, your device gets infected, and then the scammers can see what you're typing on your device, and then they use those credentials. Then we are seeing the rise of deepfakes and generative AI now, which is like we are talking here, but I don't know with what confidence you can say that it's some bad actor sitting and not really Rajat sitting over here.

So this is the challenge that AI has got on the wrong side. And then the last one is that scams have become more and more cross-border. Scams are not a new problem; they used to happen centuries ago too.

We have seen crime; it was in physical space, now it is getting more and more transformed into digital space. And the opportunity is massive. We have seen from our reports and the research what we are doing, the scams are being operated by the big criminal syndicates now.

They see a big potential here. There are many geographies which are being misutilized by these actors to run scam syndicates which involve real humans. If I have to say in one line, it's not the technology that they are targeting now, it's the human who they are targeting.

In your capacity as GASA head, how are members looking at it?

Global Anti-Scam Alliance or GASA, it's an NGO which was based in the Netherlands. It started in Europe actually and has a relatively smaller setup over there.

And back in 2022, we kind of saw one of their summits and then we saw the potential to solve the scams problem. We need to collaborate, we need to come together and this was looking like a great platform. So we got the Global Anti-Scam Alliance to the Asia Pacific.

We started with Singapore, let's say we open a chapter here and see if we can bring in like-minded entities, like-minded companies together to see what can be done. It really worked. A couple of years ago when we started GASA, it was just an idea.

And just a couple of months ago, we hosted the largest global anti-scam summit worldwide. Close to 800 people from governments, regulators, the anti-scam command centres, police forces, financial institutions, NGOs, and everyone participated with the common goal that we have to defeat scams. As GASA, they do lots of things where we do research to be able to defeat or to be able to counter a problem.

You need to first know how big the problem is. You need to know what the size of the problem is. And this is the big challenge that we have seen in countries where many countries don't know how much they're losing to scams.

That's the first step, as GAS,A we took is that we started surveying the markets. We started looking into the lost numbers, which made the government realise that, oh, it's becoming a bigger and bigger problem and the citizens are losing so much money. The second thing we do as GASA is to bring collaboration and cooperation.

We're hosting this summit where like-minded entities come together and talk about what can be done together. Can we share data? Can we share information which can be beneficial for governments to stop scams or for financial institutions to stop scams?

We are collaborating with international institutions as well. Like last year, jointly with UNDP, we announced an anti-scam handbook, which essentially talks about how to deal with scams in developing countries and what kind of technological solutions are available to counter scams. Also, now, slowly, we have started expanding beyond Singapore as well.

This year, we announced the expansion of global anti-scam alliance chapters in Indonesia and the Philippines as well.

Let me touch upon payment companies or intermediaries broadly. Since you did say one of the key tasks or objectives of this alliance is to see what can be done. And one, I'm guessing, is the communication aspect of it. What is it that you see people in your ecosystem doing to counter this?

What we have been communicating to various governments as well, that it has to be a combination. I mean, if you have to target this problem, it has to be a combination of education, policy, and technology. None of each can solve the problem alone.

Many governments have started looking into the education aspect. In Singapore, there are companies which are working on creating the toolkits and how, in a lighter way or through gamification, can explain this problem of scams and how to tackle scams. From a policy perspective, some governments have taken bold steps.

If you see the problem of scams, the big challenge, I mean, I will touch the payment company here as well or payment scheme as well. Let's say if a fraud happens or scam happens on a credit card instrument where you are travelling somewhere and you come back and you see a transaction which you don't recognise you have done, you can simply raise a dispute to the financial institution saying that, oh, I have not done this transaction or I don't recognise this. So there is a proper dispute resolution process and a recourse mechanism that if you have not done that transaction, you will get your money back.

With the rise of real-time payment systems, account-to-account transfer, there is no recourse mechanism. I mean, I do a payment transaction real-time to you. I will transfer 2,000 INR to you.

It's done. Transfer is done. I cannot really claim and dispute that, oh, I have not done this transaction.

That's why the challenge is that there is no regulation around this. So one of the big things the UK government has done is that the regulator over there said that in these kinds of transactions also, the liability doesn't sit with consumers. Like in the example I gave, the liability is mine.

I gave you 2,000 INR. I lost that money. While in the UK, the government said that between sending institution and receiving institution, you have to split the liability, which means that if I transfer the money in the UK and it turns out to be a scam, if I go and report that as a scam, the financial institutions sending and receiving both will split the liability.

This has done two things. I mean, the financial institutions became more and more aware and then also they started acting quickly on this problem because there is a reason, there's a motive now that the liability sits with them. And it has effectively worked in the case of the UK as well.

That's the only country which has reported a downturn on scams. Last year, there were 12% less scams than the previous year. So regulation is helping that way.

Singapore has also done scam shield deployments for mobile devices that effectively help you identify messages or calls that are coming from scammers and help you to protect against those kinds of calls. A good example came from India as well, where I was speaking to my friend, Mr Naveen from the Department of Telecom and I was so heartened to hear that they managed to stop millions of fraudulent transactions, which resulted in saving 140 crores of hard-earned money. Last example I want to quote, since you have asked for the financial institutions, Mastercard also collaborated with the banks in the UK.

It's a complete chain. It starts from the internet, it comes to the telcos, it comes to the social media platforms, and then it goes to the financial institution where the actual transfer happens. And then finally, it is with the law enforcement.

If it's a bad transaction, they are going to trace where the money has gone and how the money has moved. So we tried countering this at different levels. If you can stop at the internet or telco level, you stop there.

Platforms need to play their role as well to stop being misused. And then with financial institutions, what Mastercard has done was give them preventive risk scores. For example, you have an Axis Bank account, and I am an ICICI account holder, and I'm doing a transaction for you.

Today, most of the banks, when they do the assessment about a particular transaction, they will see my spending pattern, they will see my credit score, they will see how I am doing and where I am. And all those things they do, it's pretty much a singular view, right? What they see, what's happening with me and probably what your financial institution will see is what's happening with you.

Imagine someone put up an advertisement in the newspaper or, you know, in social media channels that diabetes can be cured. Please click the link below and then buy the medicine. What happens is that hundreds or thousands of people are going to click that link and then the money will start coming to your account.

But because the financial institution only sees the singular view, it will not catch this pattern. It's not one transaction. There are thousands of people suddenly transferring money to go in for no rhyme or reason.

This is what we have done in the UK with the financial institution together to bring the network view in place. And with that, we are able to identify the patterns that, if this looks like a bad transaction, then we are able to report to the institution that something is wrong with this. So either the sending institution or the receiving institution stops the transaction.

And this was very effective as a preventive measure. And beyond that, the next set of challenges go in spite of all these things, because scams are getting more and more authorised in space. I'm in love and I want to give my money to someone who can stop me.

It's my account. It's my device. It's my wish.

Legally, also, no one can stop me. And this is what is happening. It's an authorised space, whether it's investment scams, job scams, romance scams, or love scams.

If it's self-infected, then it's very difficult to trace. It's very difficult to even detect. So even though we are doing everything in this scam chain, if the money is lost, can we quickly trace the money?

Because it moves in seconds.

It keeps moving from account to account, right? I think that's the other thing.

At some point, it will go out of your jurisdiction as well, which is what we have seen. That's how the scam money moves out of the countries or jurisdictions. So from that perspective, there is another work for what we have done with the Philippine government, where we have given them the tool which shows them the money movement quickly so that they're able to quickly stop the transaction.

I mean, if someone reports that, okay, I have been scammed, then how quickly you can go and stop this transfer. India is also looking into similar kinds of solutions, where if a scam has happened, how quickly we can stop the money from floating into accounts. Because once it goes into the mule accounts, it's very difficult.

These accounts belong to someone in a rural area, living in below poverty conditions, and they will not even realise what has happened. And there is no solution to this problem, right? What will you do with that individual?

He has done nothing wrong. He's not even aware that that account is a mule account. So quite a few things.

It's a combination of education, policy, and technology which needs to be in place to come to the challenge. Right.

Let's say at the intersection of public policy and private sector or private-public partnership, what's the one thing that you feel there could be more emphasis on right now or let's say in the next few months or in this period? What could we be focusing on right now, amongst the many other things?

From an education perspective, I think it has to be reinforced. When we did the research, we figured out that in four weeks' time, I mean, you educate someone that this is a bad transaction. This is how you detect that it's not a good transaction or this is a scam.

This remains consistent for four weeks, and then the decline starts, and the person becomes vulnerable again. So how do you reinforce this continuously from an education perspective? From a policy perspective, I feel that data is one of the big challenges, data sharing.

How do you do that within the regulations of data, privacy, and banking secrecy? Because that is going to solve quite some of the technology issues or technology challenges that institutions are facing, how do you counter this problem? And then scammers are operating in cross-jurisdiction.

I mean, someone sitting in the Golden Triangle, Cambodia, Laos or Myanmar and then if the call is coming from there, it's beyond jurisdiction, right? So you need more cross-jurisdiction collaboration as well to counter this challenge.

Author:   Govindraj Ethiraj

Maheshwari, the chairman of Global Anti-Scam Alliance, said that education, policy, and technology need to be combined to take on scams globally.

Tags:  

scams online safety