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Thousands of Asians deceived for online scams

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Thousands of Asians deceived for online scams

11 October 2022 12:32

Things were looking bad for Bilce Tan, 41 and a native of Malaysia. He had lost his job during the acute phase of the covid-19 pandemic and had spent months looking for a job. Then, in May, a fantastic opportunity presented itself to him. After several interviews, a Malaysian company offered him a job as business development manager at their location in Sihanoukville, Cambodia’s tourist city. The company would pay him twelve thousand ringgit ($ 2,588) a month, far more than he could have earned in Malaysia. Additional benefits included free room and board in a condominium with swimming pool. Tan accepted.

Not long after arriving in Sihanoukville, she began to feel uncomfortable. The resort where the employers had the office was guarded by armed guards and the walls were covered with barbed wire. During the training course they taught him how to scam people online and when he protested, the bosses ignored it. They told him there was no way out of that complex: he was trapped.

Tan’s story is common to many people. In recent years, tens of thousands of Asians have been lured into casinos and resorts in Cambodia, Laos and Burma, only to discover that their “employers” were in fact criminals who force “new hires” to work in illegal companies. dealing with scams or online gambling.

Fictional characters
They are well organized scams. Tan had fake social media profiles, ten cell phones, a list of targets and information about the victims’ assets, relationships and education, as well as scripts adapted to different types of prey. Her managers have taught him to overcome the distrust of vulnerable people, such as retirees and single parents, by chatting with them every day.
They also provided him with photos and footage that supported the invented stories for the many characters he impersonated.

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Total losses for 2021 could be tens of billions, because the vast majority of victims do not report the crime

Once the trust of the targets was gained, the actual scam began. Instead of asking for money directly, as in a traditional scam, Tan urged the victim to deposit cryptocurrencies on an investment platform manipulated by criminals. The sums at stake were increasing more and more. Often, at first, the target could make small withdrawals. Gradually, satisfied with the legitimacy of the platform, he deposited ever greater sums with it. Until, one day, the fictional character vanished, leaving behind an incredulous and broke victim (Tan claims he never managed to scam anyone).

The 1,200 victims of similar scams that the Global anti-scam organization, a victim support organization, became aware of, lost a total of $ 250 million. A double figure was lost in 2021 by those who contacted CipherBlade, an investigation firm. Total losses by 2021 could be tens of billions, because the vast majority of victims do not report the crime, CipherBlade admits. Using official estimates of the scale of the phenomenon and the revenue figures reported by the testimonies, the NGO International Justice Mission (IJM) estimates that criminal organizations in Cambodia make at least $ 12 billion a year from online scams.

These scams are organized by ethnic Chinese criminal gangs, who sometimes collaborate with their local colleagues, explains Jeremy Douglas of the United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention. In the beginning, criminals invested in casinos, which are ideal places for money laundering. Then ten years ago, when Chinese authorities cracked down on illicit gambling nationwide, criminal organizations shifted their operations south, finding fertile ground in the lawless eastern areas of Burma and dozens of special economic zones of Southeast Asia, over which the local authorities seem convinced they have no jurisdiction.

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Rescues and repatriations
With the closure of the borders at the beginning of the pandemic, casino patrons, mostly Chinese, have disappeared. So criminal groups migrated to the internet, casting a bigger net and targeting the Chinese diaspora and anyone with money, regardless of where they live. Soon they also set their sights on Americans, Australians, Europeans and the middle classes of Southeast Asia. But to hook them they needed digitally-savvy workers who could speak English or the languages ​​of Asian countries.

Criminal groups procured their workforce by framing people like Tan. Some work voluntarily for these scams, but many others are being held against their will. According to the Cambodian government, criminal groups employ between eighty thousand and one hundred thousand people, a plausible estimate but perhaps lower than the reality according to Jacob Sims, of the IJM. Most are lured to Cambodia by deception.

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The first rumors about this human trafficking surfaced in the local media at the beginning of 2021. The NGO IJM began carrying out the first rescues of people in April of the same year, in collaboration with the Cambodian police and the competent embassies. Since then, foreign diplomacies in Cambodia have worked tirelessly to repatriate their citizens. Some are released when their families pay thousands of ransom dollars, others manage to escape, and still others attempt suicide. Governments in at least eight Asian countries have urged their citizens to be wary of jobs that are too good to be true in Cambodia.

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At first, the Cambodian government ignored it. But with growing pressure from China and other countries, Prime Minister Hun Sen announced in September a crackdown on “illegal gambling,” a term that encompasses casino-related crime. Since then, authorities in Sihanoukville and Phnom Penh, the capital, have raided larger complexes, arresting hundreds of people. But even if Cambodia manages to hunt down the cyber scammers, they will move to more welcoming places in Laos or Burma.

Back free and safe in Malaysia, Tan is among the luckiest. But he struggles to see things like this: his kidnappers have confiscated his credit cards and his phone. Then they denied him access to bank accounts, preventing him from accessing his life savings. Before he could explain to his wife that he was kidnapped, she blocked the number and her former captors posted his personal information online. The wife thinks he is responsible for what happened to him and wants a divorce. Tan managed to escape, but like victims around the world, he paid a very high price.

(Translation by Federico Ferrone)

This article appeared in the British weekly The Economist.

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