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From March 2025 until today, victims of human trafficking from 66 countries have been trafficked into online scam centers, mainly in Southeast Asia (Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, the Philippines, and Malaysia).
74% of trafficking victims were taken to hubs in Southeast Asia, while the number of such centers is steadily increasing in the Middle East, West Africa (which is emerging as the new hub of this illegal activity), and Central America.
According to the UN, this amounts to a form of slavery.
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These centers exploit hundreds of thousands of victims of human trafficking, typically recruited through deceptive job advertisements.
They are held in residential compounds and forced to run online scams, mainly aimed at stealing money.
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According to Interpol, victims are held against their will and are often subjected to debt bondage and extortion, as well as beatings, sexual exploitation, torture, and rape.
In a report, the UN also says that victims’ access to food and clean water is limited, and that living conditions are unhygienic.
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Victims of human trafficking contact potential scam victims via social media and messaging apps to “build” online relationships before luring them into fake investments (e.g., cryptocurrencies), with the aim of extracting large sums of money. This scheme is commonly known as pig butchering. Money laundering and illegal gambling activities have also been reported.
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They are also known as online romance scams. This is a type of fraud in which scammers emotionally manipulate people in order to extract money or personal information. These scams are carried out mainly through online platforms such as dating sites, social media, or even messaging apps.
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Around 90% of human trafficking facilitators come from Asia, and 11% from South America or Africa.
80% of the coordinators were men, and 61% were aged between 20 and 39.
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The UNODC (the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime) estimates that, in 2023 alone, financial losses from scams targeting victims in East and Southeast Asia totalled between $18 billion and $37 billion, with a large share of those losses attributed to scams carried out by organized crime groups in Southeast Asia.
