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New York Post
6 days ago
- New York Post
Inside the cyber-scam capital of the world
The message from Alice was blunt: 'I don't trust you. You are one of them, right? You all just want to sell me like some animal.' Alice's hostile reaction wasn't completely surprising to Ivan Franceschini, Ling Li and Mark Bo, the co-authors of 'Scam: Inside Southeast Asia's Cybercrime Compounds' (Verso), out July 8. 'Like the dozens of other survivors we met in the following months,' they write, 'her harrowing experience had left her unable to trust anyone.' 9 The past half-decade has seen a nefarious web of cyber-scam operations set up shop across Southeast Asia, luring (and trapping) workers from across the globe targeting victims on every corner of the planet. Getty Images Advertisement Alice (not her real name), a Taiwanese single mom, had recently escaped from a Cambodian scam compound where she'd been raped, beaten, sold multiple times and nearly forced into a brothel. She'd been lured to the town of Sihanoukville by a friend who promised her a legitimate job, and even paid for her visa and flight. What awaited Alice, however, was not a front-desk position but forced criminal labor in an online fraud mill. 'The supervisor informed her that she had been sold there to conduct online scams,' the authors write, 'and that she would not be allowed to leave until she had earned enough money for the company.' Advertisement 9 The center of Asia's cyber-criminal network. libin – When she resisted, the supervisor threatened Alice with a stun gun and 'said that if she did not comply, he would lock her up in a room and let several men rape her,' the authors write. 'Which is exactly what happened soon after.' They tried to make her a 'pig butcher,' referring to a slow-burn online scam that involved using fictional profiles of wealthy, attractive people to blackmail hapless marks. Alice refused to play along, feigning ignorance of how to type. They made her clean. Then they sold her again. And again. This is what modern slavery looks like in the internet age. Alice is just one victim among several interviewed by the authors, all of them part of a vast criminal economy with operations across Southeast Asia. In countries like Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar, cybercrime syndicates run industrial-scale scam operations staffed by trafficked laborers and protected by complicit authorities. Advertisement 9 The beachy town of Sihanoukville in Cambodia has become the nexus of that nation's cyber-scam trade. AWL Images – The industry blossomed during the pandemic, when 'scam operators achiev[ed] record profits capitalising on the misery and loneliness of people stuck in endless lockdowns,' the authors write. According to the latest UN estimates, there were in 2023 'at least 120,000 people . . . forced to carry out online scams across Myanmar, with another 100,000 in Cambodia,' write the authors. At the center of this ecosystem is Sihanoukville, a once-sleepy Cambodian beach town transformed into 'a global online scam hub,' the authors write. The transformation began in the mid-2010s, when Chinese criminal groups began buying up property, converting apartments, villas and hotel rooms into closed compounds for scam work. These were not fly-by-night setups. They came with dorms, cafeterias, surveillance rooms and punishment cells. By the late 2010s, Sihanoukville had become a scam metropolis. 9 Pres. Trump has vowed to crackdown on cyber-crime syndicates in Cambodia and across Asia. Will Oliver – Pool via CNP / MEGA Advertisement The business model was simple: Traffic in people, extract money from strangers online and do it all behind steel doors. The operations 'often look like standard apartment buildings with unusually strict security measures,' the authors write. 'Such as high walls with barbed wire and guards posted at gates, to prevent people from escaping as much as to stop unauthorized people from entering.' The profits were massive. The risk was minimal. And the victims weren't only the ones on the other end of the keyboard. 9 Trump's most visible target is the company Huione Pay. Google Maps George, a Ugandan man in his early 30s with an IT degree, was recruited from Dubai in August 2022, to manage data in Laos. He was offered a monthly salary of $1,500, plus allowances and commissions. Once there, he signed a fake contract, had his passport taken and was put to work defrauding people using prewritten scripts. When he refused, he was sold to another compound in Myanmar. 'They don't tell you [how much they sell you for],' he told the authors. 'They just tell you: 'We own you. We bought you' . . . It's weird. It takes you back to the ages of the slave trade in Africa.' Inside the compounds, daily life blends corporate dystopia with prison brutality. New workers are given scripts and digital playbooks with titles like 'Phrases for Love, Friendship, and Gambling.' There are quotas, and heavy surveillance. Everything workers type can be tracked. 9 The new book 'Scam' explores Southeast Asia's cybercrime factories. If they miss a quota, punishment follows. Some workers are forced to do 'frog jumps,' an excruciating squat exercise repeated for hours. Others are made to run up and down stairs, or stand in the blistering sun for hours while holding heavy objects. The unlucky and disobedient ones are beaten or sold. Advertisement The scams themselves are psychologically sophisticated. Pig butchering involves building rapport over weeks or even months before proposing a seemingly low-risk investment in a phony crypto platform. Once the victim's guard is down — and their life savings transferred — the scammer ghosts them. Some workers are paid commissions based on how much their victims lose. 'Bonuses can be lucrative,' the authors write, 'and the rules are often posted in public areas as a reminder to all staff.' Others are forced to perform the scams without pay under threat of physical harm. The result is a chilling blend of victim and perpetrator: exploited laborers trained to exploit others. 9 'Scam' co-author Ivan Franceshini. Courtesy of Ivan Franceschini One company in Cambodia charged workers for everything they used inside: toilets, chairs, keyboards, the portion of floor they occupied and even the 'seaside air' they breathed. 'Consequently, no matter how long they work, their debts can continue to grow,' the authors write. Many go deeper into debt while trapped, their families extorted for ransom payments that may or may not result in release. The psychological toll is devastating. Alice described 'brainwashed' survivors who 'developed some mental illness.' Meanwhile, her own family thought she was trafficked 'because I am greedy and wanted to get rich overnight,' Alice admits. Advertisement Efforts to crack down have had limited effect. When compounds in Cambodia are raided, the operators move to Laos. When Laos tightens regulations, they set up shop in Myanmar. There are always more buildings, more bribes and more desperate people willing to answer job ads that turn out to be traps. The authors note that these operations are not rogue or isolated. They are systems. Ecosystems. And they are growing. 'Tech companies are failing to ensure that their services are not used as platforms for organised criminals,' the authors write. Messaging apps continue to facilitate communication between recruiters and victims. Governments continue to look the other way — or actively profit from the business. 9 Co-author Mark Bo. Courtesy of Mark Bo Even when victims are rescued, justice is rare. Some are deported. Others are treated as criminals. A few, like Alice, find ways to speak out. Most don't. And even for those who escape, the trauma lingers. Alice eventually found a way to post a call for help on Instagram and 'was rescued before being sold a fifth time,' the authors write. She now works with advocacy groups to warn others about the dangers of overseas job scams. 'If I had been enslaved for a year or two,' she tells the authors, 'I might not be able to believe in humanity anymore.' Advertisement 9 Co-author Ling Li. Courtesy of Ling Li This industry isn't going away, the authors write. It's adapting. It's expanding — even as it faces a crackdown by the Trump administration, which recently designated the Cambodian firm Huione Group what so many already know it to be: a money-laundering operation. Still, much work remains to free women like Alice. In the time it took to read this story, another person somewhere may have just clicked 'Apply Now' on a job that doesn't exist.
Irish Independent
02-07-2025
- Irish Independent
The ‘cyber slaves' forced to scam you
If you, or anyone you know, have fallen victim to an online scam, you're unlikely to have wondered whether the con artists themselves were having a difficult time. Yet, as Ivan Franceschini, Ling Li and Mark Bo show in their fascinating new book Scam, if the perpetrators are operating out of Southeast Asia, there's a high likelihood they'll be tortured themselves if they don't successfully trick enough people out of their data or cash.
Telegraph
25-06-2025
- Telegraph
The Asian ‘cyber slaves' forced to scam you – or face horrific torture
If you, or anyone you know, have fallen victim to an online scam, you're unlikely to have wondered whether the con artists themselves were having a difficult time. Yet, as Ivan Franceschini, Ling Li and Mark Bo show in their fascinating new book Scam, if the perpetrators are operating out of South-east Asia, there's a high likelihood they'll be tortured themselves if they don't successfully trick enough people out of their data or cash. Scam, subtitled Inside Southeast Asia's Cybercrime Compounds, details how hundreds of thousands of people are working in makeshift prisons to commit cyberfraud 'on an industrial scale'. They're victims of 'cyber slavery', a term that sounds like something out of a William Gibson novel, but is depressingly real and horrible. For, over the past decade, criminal gangs from China and Taiwan have set up 'compounds' in Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos and the Philippines, where the regulations and policing around these operations are lax. Here, thousands of workers – most of whom are trafficked from China – are made to work with 10 phones, 17 hours a day, attempting to con people around the world out of their money. In the process, the criminal bosses make billions of dollars, and use some of that money to line the pockets of politicians, police or local communities that might try to stop the operations. The compounds, as Franceschini and co describe them, sound like places of complete misery and terror. Workers who are able to achieve certain targets for their bosses – such as, say, generating more than $10,000 a month through scams – are given rewards such as money, or better food, or even a brief spell of leave from the compound. For those who underperform, however, life becomes 'a nightmare'. Most are tortured, which can range from severe beatings to electric shocks, sexual abuse and fingernail extraction. 'We could hear the screams continuing until midnight,' a Chinese worker who escaped a Cambodian compound tells the authors. 'They [the compound managers] made sure you understand that you do not want to be the next one to end up in the punishment room.' Although these workers are paid a salary, when their work begins they're usually made to sign a document that puts them in significant financial debt to the compound operators, a debt that's then repaid through the conducting of scams. Sometimes workers might be sold onto a different scam company in another country; they might even be sold several times over. They have no say in the matter. As a Ugandan man who'd been trapped in a Myanmar compound explains: 'They just tell you: 'We own you, we bought you… It's takes you back to the ages of the slave trade in Africa.' While a number of press articles have been written about this issue, Scam is one of the first books to provide a comprehensive overview of this alarming criminal industry and its 'annexed humanitarian crisis'. The authors are well placed to provide this, having spent years studying this industry: between 2022 and 2024, Li alone conducted 96 interviews with survivors of the compounds. Yet for such a shocking topic, the book can feel a little academic in its tone; it often reads more like a textbook than the gripping non-fiction it could be. I never felt fully immersed in this world; I wanted more on daily life in the compounds. The quotes from the survivors are just snippets, whereas it would have been more interesting to have an account of someone's entire journey, from being tricked into working at these compounds, to the hell they faced inside and what their captors were like, and onto their eventual escape. Nonetheless, Franceschini and co do provide an excellent breakdown of how hard it is to get out of these operations. The compounds, which are sometimes repurposed office blocks, hotels or casinos, and sometimes entire villages, are largely self-sufficient: they have their own canteens, dormitories, supermarkets, hair salons, pharmacies, even brothels. They're also surrounded by five-metre high walls that have 'high-voltage electricity cables on top and armed sentries monitoring the perimeter… [and] checkpoints every few hundred metres outside'. And even if you do escape all this, it'll be a long time before you're likely to feel safe. Passports, personal phones and other identification documents are taken away from workers when they enter the compound. Local politicians and police in countries such as Myanmar and Cambodia largely turn a blind eye to these operations; as above, they may even themselves benefit financially. Scam quotes one man who escaped a compound in Cambodia and ran to the police, only to realise that they were in the pockets of the compound owners: the latter collected him from the station and then filmed themselves viciously beating him, sending the video to his family to ask for more money, by way of a ransom, in order to secure his release. It's estimated that 120,000 people have been held in such situations in Myanmar, and another 100,000 in Cambodia. Some victims have been kidnapped and sold into the operations; others are willingly brought in from countries such as China, naively believing they're getting a highly-paid job. They might have responded to a dodgy job advert, or been tricked by someone they met online – even on a dating app. In 2025, a few high-profile stories appeared in the Chinese media, about victims from that country who'd been tricked into working at these compounds. It led Beijing to issue an official statement outlining efforts to address the problem, and that compelled the authorities in Myanmar to raid some large compounds and release thousands of trapped workers. Franceschini and co, however, make it clear that the 'industry is here to stay'. There's evidence of scam compounds now appearing in Serbia, Turkey, Georgia, South America, India, and Central and West Africa. These horrible operations, they write, have 'gone global'. ★★★★☆
Yahoo
24-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Scam Factories: the inside story of Southeast Asia's brutal fraud compounds
Scam Factories is a special multimedia and podcast series by The Conversation that explores the inner workings of Southeast Asia's brutal scam compounds. The Conversation's digital storytelling and podcast teams collaborated with three researchers: Ivan Franceschini, a lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Melbourne; Ling Li, a PhD candidate at Ca' Foscari University of Venice; and Mark Bo, an independent researcher. The researchers have spent the past few years interviewing nearly 100 survivors of these compounds and documenting the rise of the industry in Southeast Asia for a forthcoming book. Scam Factories will unfold across three multimedia articles and three podcast episodes this week. We'll update this page as more is published. Our first article explores how people are lured into the industry and what life is like inside the compounds, where scammers are forced to work long hours and are often subjected to violence. And in our first podcast episode, No skills required, our researchers travel to a village in Cambodia called Chrey Thom to see what these compounds look like. And we hear from two survivors, a Ugandan man we're calling George and a Malaysian woman we're calling Lee, about how they were recruited into compounds in Laos and Myanmar. Listen on The Conversation Weekly podcast. The Conversation contacted all the companies mentioned in this series for a comment, except Jinshui, which we couldn't contact. We did not receive a response from any of them. The podcast series was written and produced by Gemma Ware with production assistance from Katie Flood and Mend Mariwany. Sound design by Michelle Macklem. Leila Goldstein was our producer in Cambodia and Halima Athumani recorded for us in Uganda. Hui Lin helped us with Chinese translation. Photos by Roun Ry, KDA, Halima Athumani and Ivan Franceschini. Justin Bergman at The Conversation in Australia edited the articles in the series and Matt Garrow worked on the graphical elements of the stories. Series oversight and editing help from Ashlynne McGhee. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
