TRM Labs has appointed Ziqing Ang as Head of Policy for Asia-Pacific, marking a significant expansion of the blockchain intelligence firm's regional compliance capabilities. According to reports from crypto.news, Ang brings over eight years of experience at the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) before transitioning to institutional digital assets through roles at Sygnum and BPI Financial Group. Her appointment follows TRM's hiring of former MAS regulator Claudia Hui as Head of Compliance Advisory for APAC last month, demonstrating the company's commitment to building comprehensive regional compliance infrastructure. As per TRM Labs, Ang will engage regulators, policymakers, law enforcement agencies and private institutions on digital asset crime and emerging threats across the region. Ari Redbord, TRM Labs' global head of policy, emphasized that Ang's experience moving between government and private sectors would support the company's work with authorities and institutions in Asia-Pacific. Ang stated that 'Asia-Pacific is at an important stage in how it regulates technology in the age of AI, and the decisions made over the next few years will shape the safety of the ecosystem.'
The appointment comes as TRM Labs tracks adjusted crypto crime volume rising from approximately $123 million in 2020 to more than $103 billion in 2025. As reported by crypto.news, investment scams, including pig-butchering schemes, accounted for 62% of fraud inflows last year, while AI-enabled scam activity increased by 40%. Ang will work with regulators, policymakers, law enforcement agencies and private institutions across Asia-Pacific, focusing on illicit financial networks and policy responses as governments develop rules for digital assets and artificial intelligence. Her experience moving between government and private sectors is expected to support the company's work with authorities and institutions in the region. Ziqing Ang emphasized that Asia-Pacific is at an important stage in how it regulates technology in the age of AI, and decisions made over the next few years will shape the safety of the ecosystem. Generative AI is compounding the problem, with TRM tracking a 40% increase in AI-enabled scam activity, from deepfake recruitment videos to fabricated account dashboards, as these tools move from experiment to operational infrastructure.
Ang's career began at MAS, where she worked on financial markets development and reserve management, managing fixed-income portfolios and contributing to macroeconomic research connected with Singapore's official foreign reserves. According to crypto.news, after leaving the regulator, she joined Sygnum as vice president of business development, supporting digital asset adoption among institutional and accredited investors. Most recently, she served as chief business officer at Bright Point International Digital Assets, part of BPI Financial Group, where she led development of over-the-counter brokerage operations, including licensing and institutional infrastructure. Ari Redbord, TRM Labs' global head of policy, noted that this is a moment when the public and private sectors must come together to get ahead of threats emerging in the region, highlighting Ang's deep expertise and experience working across both sectors. Ang emphasized that Asia-Pacific has become one of the most consequential regions in the world for digital asset and AI policy, with criminal networks leveraging transformative technology to move at unprecedented speed and scale. APAC regulators are building digital asset and AI governance frameworks at the same time, giving the region a real opportunity to write enforcement and compliance tools directly into them from the start.
The appointment occurs amid ongoing enforcement actions across Southeast Asia, where pig-butchering operations have been linked to large compounds and human trafficking. As reported by crypto.news, in March, the FBI and Thai police froze about $580 million in cryptocurrency and seized around 8,000 phones during a cross-border fraud operation targeting Southeast Asian pig-butchering groups. In July, separate investigations opened in India after reports that Indian nationals had been trafficked to Myanmar and forced to work inside crypto scam compounds. Chinese national Jingliang Su was sentenced to 46 months in a U.S. prison in January after pleading guilty in connection with a network that transferred more than $36.9 million from U.S. bank accounts before converting funds into USDT and sending assets to Cambodia. TRM's platform is trusted by 600+ government agencies and financial institutions across 75 countries to counter fraud, scams, cyber crime, child exploitation, money laundering, and sanctions evasion. The company is headquartered in San Francisco and operates as a distributed-first company with hubs in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Washington D.C., London, and Singapore, currently hiring across all functions including applied AI, machine learning, engineering, data science, go-to-market, and operations.
