Malaysian police say they have uncovered scam call centres operating out of Forest City, a vast Chinese-built "ghost city" development on Malaysia's southern coast that was originally marketed as a $100bn luxury paradise for 700,000 residents. In mid-July, officers raided 32 premises across the near-empty development, arresting 335 people accused of running cryptocurrency-based investment and romance scams targeting victims overseas, in what experts describe as a symptom of a professionalising, multinational global scam industry increasingly resembling corporate operations rather than traditional criminal gangs.

Those detained included 309 Chinese, 19 Indonesian, four Myanmar and three Malaysian nationals, with police seizing roughly one million ringgit (£181,810) in assets, including hundreds of computers, phones and laptops. Authorities believe the operation, run from apartments and bungalows rather than the fortified "compounds" typical in Cambodia and Myanmar, may involve criminals displaced by Cambodia's recent crackdown on scam centres, which has seen an estimated 300,000 people leave the country amid intensified raids; Johor police say they are now working with Interpol to trace the operation's mastermind.