The infamed scam centres with hubs in Cambodia, Myanmar and Thailand – often known for their huge complexes are finding solace in newer, smaller spaces now, located in Sri Lanka.
With Dissanyake’s government focussing on a push for tourism and easy visas, scam centres are seeing an opportunity. An article by the Lowy Institute suggests that conditions that initially made these two South-east Asian nations attractive to scammers such as accessible entry, infrastructure, connectivity and enforcement gaps – now exist in Sri Lanka.
Sri Lanka extends free tourist visas to nationals of over 40 countries, including India and China. The 30-day visa is extendable to six months. Criminal gangs have begun to exploit this with clinical efficiency, setting up operations in coastal villas, suburban apartments, and luxury hotel suites — running industrialised fraud out of spaces that look, from the outside, like the ordinary churn of tourism.
The Japan Times reported that just last month, Sri Lanka ‘s customs officials caught nine Chinese nationals smuggling hundreds of used mobile phones and laptops, raising suspicions about their usage in large-scale fraudulent operations and scam centres.
The numbers are reflecting the possible impact. The Lowy paper notes that in the first three months of 2026, arrests in Sri Lanka had already exceeded 50% of those reported during all of 2025. If this trend continues, the annual figure could be greater than 600 cases, roughly double that in either 2024 or 2025.
At the cusp of this rising trend is Sri Lanka’s weak data protection laws. The Computer Crimes Act and Personal Data Protection Act do not yet adequately address the specific crimes associated with scam centre operations. Frauds in ‘pig butchering’ schemes and cryptocurrency-related investments are not defined in these acts. The new cybercrime investigation bureau also fails to prosecute operators of illegal scam centres so far, focussing on deportation instead.
An article from The Sunday Times, a Sri Lankan news portal, reports that an overwhelming majority of suspects arrested for computer crime offences are Indian and Chinese nationals. Cybersecurity analysts and policy observers in Colombo are raising concerns over the government’s failure to properly regulate visa processes and laws governing foreign tourists, the report said.
