June 19, 2025
By Iris Shu Liu
Medical fraud in the Asia-Pacific region has skyrocketed by a staggering 723% year-over-year, marking the sharpest increase among all industries and underscoring the region’s mounting struggle against deepfake scams. New data from global verification provider Sumsub reveals that this surge in healthcare technology fraud Q1 2024 and Q1 2025, far outpaces the 116% jump seen in fintech, signaling an urgent new threat to digital trust across APAC.
“While fintech fraud has long been a battleground, the scale of fraud in healthtech signals a worrying new frontier,” said Penny Chai, Vice President for APAC at Sumsub. Hong Kong, a global financial hub, has become a hotspot for AI-powered scams, with deepfake-related fraud cases in the city jumping 1,900% between 2024 and 2025—outstripping even Singapore’s 1,500% surge.
Police in Hong Kong recently dismantled a syndicate using deepfake technology to lure victims into romance and investment scams, netting more than HK$34 million (US$4.37 million). Synthetic identity fraud, 233% in APAC, compared to a 195% global average. The rapid adoption of generative AI tools has enabled fraudsters to forge documents and bypass remote verification, making detection harder than ever.
In response, Hong Kong and regional regulators are tightening anti-money laundering and biometric data laws. China and Singapore have updated legislation to require dynamic verification and clear labeling of AI-generated content, while financial institutions are racing to implement advanced solutions such as Sumsub’s AI assistant “Summy,” which streamlines fraud investigations and helps teams keep up with increasingly complex threats.
To address the crisis, Sumsub will host its inaugural What The Fraud Summit in Singapore this November 19–20, 2025, bringing together more than 500 global experts to tackle the “fraudemic” and share strategies for a safer digital future.
About the Author
Iris Shu Liu is a recent graduate of the HKBU Business and Financial Journalism Program. She was the winner for Best Business Reporting and Best Newspaper Design in the (2022) China Daily Campus Newspaper Awards (English Edition). She is currently an intern correspondent for National Business Daily (NBD), a China-based business daily newspaper with a readership and reach of 100 million.
Edited by Joe Pan, an editor at Blockwind News and an early adopter of blockchain technology. He has covered major crypto conferences globally since 2019 and moderated Web events across Asia. Joe is part of the founding team of Blockwind News and teaches Asia’s only accredited Master of Journalism course on “Covering Cryptocurrency and Blockchain” at Hong Kong Baptist University.
