According to a United Nations assessment released on Monday, powerful criminal networks in Southeast Asia are heavily reliant on the messaging app Telegram, resulting in a dramatic shift in how organised crime executes large-scale unlawful activities.
This development follows accusations against Telegram’s CEO, Pavel Durov, who was charged in France for allegedly facilitating illegal acts on the platform under a new statute with no international precedence.
According to the investigation, unregulated cryptocurrency exchanges listed on the app provide services that facilitate money laundering for criminal organisations.
Criminals use the app to trade sensitive information, such as credit card numbers and passwords, as well as to purchase tools such as malware to steal money through messaging apps.
Hacked data such as credit card numbers, passwords, and browsing history are openly exchanged on a massive scale on the app, which has extensive channels with minimal moderation, according to a report by the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
The research claimed that cybercrime tools, including so-called deepfake software built for fraud and data-stealing malware, are widely available, and unregulated cryptocurrency exchanges provide money laundering services.
“We move 3 million USDT stolen from overseas per day,” the report quoted one ad as saying in Chinese.
There is “strong evidence of underground data markets moving to Telegram and vendors actively looking to target transnational organized crime groups based in Southeast Asia,” the report said.
Benedikt Hofmann, the UNODC’s deputy representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, cautioned that the platform’s accessibility makes it simpler for criminals to operate, raising the danger of scams and other illegal acts that jeopardise customer data.
We earlier reported that French officials detained Pavel Durov, the French-Russian millionaire who founded the messaging app Telegram, at an airport outside of Paris.
