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View all search resultsInside the ‘living hell’ of Cambodia’s scam operations
Jeremy Douglas, of the UN Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC), said "criminal groups moved casino businesses online, and some then did a pivot and added online and phone scams".
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T
rafficked, beaten and locked up far from his family in China, Lu was one of thousands of people in Cambodia forced to operate online scams to line their captors' pockets.
COVID-19 shutdowns had left the builder out of work, so when he heard he could earn US$2,000 a month on a construction project in Cambodia, he jumped at the chance.
But he soon realized he had been lured by a scamming gang to a compound in the seaside resort of Sihanoukville, along with hundreds of others.
There he was forced to work 12- to 16-hour shifts, trawling social media and dating apps on a hunt for victims to scam out of huge sums.
"Once I arrived it was too late to escape," Lu told AFP. "But as long as I was alive, I would keep trying."
People from countries around Asia – including Vietnam, the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Bangladesh and India – have been sucked into similar operations.
Some, like 34-year-old Lu, have made it out, though thousands of others are feared still trapped.
