The fact it is such a large portion of the GDP is one reason why these scam compounds are able to operate without getting shutdown , there is indirect support from government officials.
John Oliver mentioned it is as much as 50% of the GDP in Cambodia in a recent segment.
Romance scams are not new, but this has grown so quickly because of COVID , all these countries had sudden loss of tourism revenue, the gangs exploited desperate people to run these scams .
A vast majority of people scammed like this do not report to the authorities. They are too embarrassed to be scammed this way.
If victims don’t report then nothing gets labeled as fraud.
Also remember these scammers run exchange apps (fake-ish ones ) to fool people in losing more money by showing their investments going up and try to make you pay more as “tax” when you finally try to withdraw and so on .
The scam is crypto based, but the transactions don’t necessarily always happen in crypto at all, so analysis of chain alone is not sufficient to know the scale .