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Scamming Networks Kidnapping & Enslaving Victims -Modern Day Slavery
Inside The Scamming Networks Kidnapping and Enslaving Victims in East Asia
Forced scamming is one of the most complex and fastest-growing forms of modern slavery in the world.
ITV News 17 FEB 2024
The notorious compound KK-Park in Myanmar where people are being held and forced to take part in online scams.
When you think about the concept of being scammed online, you naturally think the person who might do it to you is an immoral individual, but early this year I was told about "forced scamming," which changed how I thought about the idea entirely.
Interpol recently announced that it considers it to be a global crisis "representing a serious and imminent threat to public safety."
UK banks are also warning of huge increases in online scams. So, what is it and how does it happen?
We recently went to Thailand to find out, because it is in south east Asia's poorest nations that the problem is rife, and the crime is growing. A crime that is double-edged, with two sets of victims.
Graduates from Europe, Africa and Asia are applying for jobs online that they believe are legitimate. They engage with, what they think, are recruiters.
They often have online interviews and are then offered the job abroad. They're promised competitive salaries, accommodation and a chauffeur-driven escort from the airport.
Instead, when they turn up in Asia, they are unknowingly driven to Thailand's borders where armed men then appear, take their passports from them and get them to cross a river into a compound where they are forced, under threat of violence, to persuade people from anywhere in the world to invest in crypto-currency.
They strike up relationships with foreigners, sometimes through dating apps, and message them on WhatsApp or Signal for weeks until they've gained their trust.
Once they have that trust they're persuaded to put small amounts of money into crypto schemes.
Unbeknown to the investor, the scammers have also created a fake website where the investor appears to see their money going up, so they invest more.
At this point, the investor can even withdraw their money from the crypto account.
They think they have control of it, and because they trust in the process, and the people, they invariably invest more.
When the sums are large, the advisor and scammer disappears, taking the money with them. It is the scammer's crypto account that is full, not the investor's.
It is an incredibly sophisticated operation that is spreading like wildfire across countries like Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia, where huge compounds now exist, inside which trafficked victims live and carry out the crimes and the crime thrives.
Thailand is often the transportation hub, and we travelled across it into Laos, to see for ourselves, the huge sites where victims are being held and tortured.
We spoke to victims. They told us how they were forced to do it. We witnessed a rescue, and we stood aghast at the size of it, where borders are porous and corruption is common.
"Sarah" spoke to ITV News about her experience being trafficked and forced to take part in scams.
As soon as we arrived in Bangkok, we spoke to "Sarah" online, a graduate from Africa, who was rescued from a compound in Myanmar late last year. She is now safely back home.
“The people that you’re with have your life in their hands. I had to do everything those people told me to do.”
Sarah was abducted from Bangkok airport after getting a job with a tech firm in Thailand, that she'd seen advertised on Facebook.
Instead, she was trafficked to the Thai/Myanmar border. Her passport and phone taken from her.
“They drove around to confuse us. When we got to the side of the river, there was a boat, and when you looked across the other side of the river, there were armed men. I froze. In my mind I knew, ok I’ve been trafficked.”
She was trapped inside a compound for nine months and forced to con Brits and Americans on messaging apps, into investing in cryptocurrency.
“My job was to make friends, make connections, make them believe I was a rich Asian woman and then they could entrust me with their money. They told me their whole finances and showed me a screenshot of their bank account.”
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