On Christmas Day, the Burmese military handed a gift to thousands of people who’ve cycled through the KK Park scam compound in Myanmar. Myanmar’s junta announced the demolition of three large rectangular dorms inside the notorious fraud complex, which has been under demolition since late October, when the military entered the compound and started detonating structures inside area.

According to the Myanmar government’s latest count, 525 of the 635 structures inside KK Park have been demolished. The area the junta claims to have demolished over the past week housed some of the earliest structures that popped up on the map of the bucolic Moei River valley when KK Park’s structures started to rise along the Thai-Myanmar border in 2019. Their destruction doesn’t end the lingering trauma that victims of scam-linked human trafficking suffered inside the fraud fortress. And it will take time to confirm the extent and permanence of the damage imposed on the structures. But it’s certainly a turn of events few people saw coming a year ago when Southeast Asia’s booming scam industry seemed poised for endless growth

KK Park’s breakneck expansion was iconic of that growth and the industry’s seeming invincibility. Instead, as we wrap-up 2025, we can reflect on a year of headlines such as:

• The release of over 7,000 scam industry workers from scam compounds in Myanmar in February 2025 following international outrage over the kidnapping of a Chinese actor to a scam center across the Thai-Myanmar border.

• U.S. government sanctions against Cambodia’s Huione Group for its alleged role in enabling the laundering of billions of dollars in fraud victim funds, followed by Cambodia’s order to shut down its payment services arm.

  U.S. government sanctions against Funnull Technology, a major enabler of the IT infrastructure underpinning fraudulent pig-butchering scam websites used to defraud people.

• U.S. government sanctions against a large network of scam centers and their enablers across Southeast Asia, including nine targets in Myanmar’s Shwe Kokko scam hub and ten targets in Cambodia.

• Coordinated international sanctions and an indictment against Prince Group Chairman Chen Zhi for his alleged role enabling Cambodia’s scam industry, along with the seizure of around $15 billion of Bitcoin related to his fraud and money laundering schemes.

• The creation of a Scam Center Strike Force led by U.S. law enforcement to seize funds stolen by pig-butchering scammers and return them back to victims.

• A life-in-prison sentence for Alice Guo, the former mayor of a small town in the Philippines who was found guilty of human trafficking offenses for her role in enabling Chinese criminal syndicates to build a massive scam compound in her home town of Bamban.

• The outbreak of armed conflict between Cambodia and Thailand that’s putting Cambodia’s scam compounds directly in the line of fire.

• And, of course, the demolitions of KK Park and scam centers inside Shwe Kokko.

There’s still lingering questions whether the demolitions are just for show. But all of this seems so surreal and distant from 2021, when I first heard about pig-butchering scams and started following them for the project that became this book. Back then, the scam tactic was just starting to go global and few people even knew where the fraud was originating from. Four years from now, maybe we’ll look back on 2025 as the year when the world finally woke up to the global threat posed by Southeast Asia’s pernicious scam industry. But if the international pressure and coordinated sanctions that gave rise to these events eases off in 2026, we may well end up back at square one. The multi-billion-dollar scam economy that’s taken root in Southeast Asia is led by criminal syndicates that are borderless, opportunistic and highly entrepreneurial. Uprooting the forces that gave rise to them will require an equally global and coordinated response that will need to continue well into 2026 and beyond.

I’ll be keeping a close eye on this high-stakes battle as I stay on the reporting trail for The Big Trace. Thanks for joining me on this journey, and best wishes for the year ahead. Happy New Year!