What are fraud factories? 📞

Over the last few years, we’ve all gotten used to scam calls.

But you might not realize: for every scam call, email, or text message you get, someone is on the other side.

Many scams are automated. But for a lot of them, direct human contact is required.

You also might not realize that the person doing the scamming may be enslaved by criminal gangs on the other side of the world.

Scam centers — also called fraud factories — are forced labor camps where people are forced to scam people.

Many of these scam centers are based in Southeast Asia, particularly in lawless regions of Myanmar.

German newspaper Die Welt explains how these fraud factories work:

When people arrive at the camps, they're expecting well-paid jobs.

Instead, they are forced to give up their passports and cell phones to the criminals who control the camps.

Fraud Factory Facts:

• The U.S. Institute of Peace estimates that the scam centers generate nearly $64 billion in revenue annually around the world.

  • $39B of that comes from Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia.

• The U.N. estimates that around 220,000 people are forced to work in the scam industry in Cambodia and Myanmar.

Where are the Scam Centers?

Cambodia is a hub for scam centers, as the above map shows.

Additionally, many of these camps exist on the border between Thailand and Myanmar.

• Myanmar — formerly known as Burma — is currently controlled by a military junta.

• Myanmar is the largest country by area in Mainland Southeast Asia

• The majority-Buddhist nation has a population of 55 million, and it is one of the poorest countries in the region

Gangs aligned with Myanmar’s military junta control many of the scam centers, with the military regime profiting from these centers.

Other scam centers in the region are run by Chinese organized crime.

A majority of people held in the scam center camps are from Asia, but the gangs have successfully managed to attract people from Africa and South America.

The gangs who run the camps use violence to force people to work.

One woman who was enslaved in the camps described being shocked with “electric probes almost daily” for nine months.

And in 2022, a 22-year-old Kenyan woman who was lured to Myanmar died after a botched organ harvesting surgery.

Scam Center Crackdown

Recently, the governments of Thailand and China have coordinated a response to scam centers.

Their goal: bringing their citizens home.

Thailand's government cut off electricity and internet to areas bordering Myanmar as a way of disrupting the scam economy.

But Thai politician Rangsiman Rōm argues that more effort is needed.

He said: just 10,000 of what he estimated to be 300,000 people have been repatriated from the ~40 camps along the Myanmar-Thailand border.

As part of its report into Transnational Crime in Southeast Asia, the U.S. Institute of Peace concluded:

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