Matthew Killian, U.S. Department of State, at Capitol Hill Tech Conference

The Lexington Institute was honored to have Matthew Killian, Senior Foreign Affairs Officer with the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of International Law Enforcement Affairs, speak at our July 24 Capitol Hill Tech Conference.

Mr. Killian has been on the front lines in fighting cyber scams, particularly those in Southeast Asia, that are targeting Americans. He discussed these widespread and rising crimes, and steps being taken to fight them.

“Over the past several years, transnational criminal organizations based in Southeast Asia have been targeting Americans and defrauding us of what we believe to be at least $12.5 billion a year just from … Southeast Asia. We know that’s a conservative estimate because of the stigma attached to people reporting and the different and inconsistent streams of reporting,” said Mr. Killian.

“What makes it worse is that, to fuel these scams, traffickers have recruited over 400,000 people from 80 different countries with fraudulent job offers, exploiting them in forced labor and forced criminality, which are forms of human trafficking,” he added.

To view a video of the full speech, click here.

To view the transcript, click here.