Space within each scam complex is divided between different criminal outfits, with teams of people from various countries, such as Vietnam or China, located on different floors, given a script and tasked with scamming people who speak the same language. Depending on the scam, this might involve persuading people to play online casino games (which never cash out), or using chat apps to lure people into high-yield digital investment platforms, many of which are essentially pyramid schemes. Every few months, the websites or apps used for the scam are shut down and the criminal group switches to a new one with a different name and design – but which functions in the same way. Scammers find victims through social media or by paying YouTubers to advertise their platforms, Hieupc says, and each small company has racked up millions of dollars.
While some people working at these scam centres choose to defraud strangers for a living, crime bosses have found it too difficult to source enough workers willing to run their scams, and have increasingly resorted to tricking people with fraudulent job ads – or even kidnapping them off the street. In South-East Asia’s sprawling compounds, many are now trapped in modern slavery conditions – and subject to horrific treatment if they try to leave.
“With billions of dollars in revenue and protected havens in SEA, these ‘fraud factories’ has spawned a secondary industry of human trafficking to feed their labour-intensive criminal…
