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Shinzo Abe killed, Najib Razak in jail, Chinese-run scams: crimes that gripped Asia in 2022
- More tragedy in Thailand over massacre at nursery, murder of South Korean subway worker by her stalker, brazen attack on Filipino broadcast journalist
- Asian nations in soul-searching mode after scams, shootings highlight deep problems involving drugs, online fraud and role of Chinese agents
Reading Time:4 minutes
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It was the year that Asia got scammed – hundreds of millions of dollars conned from innocents through ruses targeting a public glued to the internet. To make matters worse, it was the region’s youth who did the scamming, many tricked into cyber slavery with devastating consequences.
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But 2022 was also marked by assassinations, bomb attacks and mass shootings; the downfall of nefarious politicians – the admonishment of weed-smoking Olympians – the unspooling of massive Chinese crime gangs and the continued pursuit of billion-dollar con men. This is a year in Asian crime.
It was a grim start to the year in Singapore where a teen with a gaming addiction killed his father after he apparently limited his son’s screen time.
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In February, as digital scams began to billow out, it was an analogue crime which made the headlines from India, as a man confessed to decades of overlapping sham marriages which started in 1979 to swindle money from 27 wives.
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