Meta Chat app, WhatsApp, has taken down 6.8 million accounts linked to global scam operations in the first half of 2025, its parent company Meta has revealed.
The majority of these accounts were tied to organised scam centres operating out of Southeast Asia, many of which reportedly exploited forced labour to execute widespread fraudulent schemes.
Meta disclosed this as WhatsApp launched a series of new anti-scam features aimed at better protecting users. Among the updates is an alert system that notifies users when they’re added to group chats by people who aren’t in their contact list, a common tactic used by scammers to push fake investment deals and phishing links.
“WhatsApp proactively detected and took down accounts before scam centres were able to operationalise them,” Meta said in a statement, underlining the tech giant’s shift toward pre-emptive enforcement.
One significant disruption involved a Cambodian crime syndicate running a deceptive “rent-a-scooter” pyramid scheme. In that case, Meta, WhatsApp, and OpenAI (developer of ChatGPT) collaborated to shut down the operation. The criminals reportedly used ChatGPT to craft instructions given to their victims, and lured people with offers of easy cash for liking social media posts.
Typically, scammers initiated contact through seemingly innocent text messages before steering conversations to private messaging apps like WhatsApp, where they intensified their schemes.
According to Meta, the financial conclusion of such scams often occurred on cryptocurrency exchanges or payment platforms, where the funds became harder to trace.
