Episode 246: “Trafficked: Part Three, Asian Scam Compounds”

“What the Hack?” is DeleteMe’s true cybercrime podcast hosted by Beau Friedlander

Beau: Before we get into it this week, a word of warning. This episode includes descriptions of human trafficking, torture, and murder. If you listened to our earlier episodes on scam compounds in Southeast Asia’s special economic zones, you probably found yourself wondering what can be done to help the people trapped there, forced to work. This week: how to liberate a trafficked human being from these hellholes.

Erin: My first step was to reach out to both him and his brother on WhatsApp. And I was nervous about doing that because I’m well aware this is a contraband phone and I don’t want to call attention to him. But he did leave his phone number, so I reached out, I said, I’m an American and I would like to be helpful in getting you out of Cambodia.

Beau: This is where those texts come from. You know the ones.

Small Q: You be like, “Hey, how are you?” Those are the templates that were generated by AI actually, and they were given to us to seduce these people into relationships. So a template could be like, “Hey, I miss you. It’s been a while. Do you remember me?” You send a picture to this guy. When the guy sees you and you know, old men about, you know, beautiful ladies, they fall easy.

Beau: In this episode, we go inside a scam compound with someone who was forced to work there…

Small Q: One of the rules inside that prison, no sleeping. That’s the only word I heard from English, from those soldiers in Myanmar. 

Beau: …and hopefully we start to see a way to solve this problem. I’m Beau Friedlander and you’re listening to What the Hack, the podcast that asks, in a world where your data is everywhere, how do you stay safe online? So here’s the third installment on the scam compounds in Southeast Asia. If you haven’t heard those first two episodes, go check ’em out. We’ve talked about the machine, the compounds, the billions of dollars being stolen from people, from us over here by people over there. That’s what it feels like. The crime bosses in the special economic zones of Southeast Asia who’ve built a country inside a country. Today we’re gonna talk about the people inside that machine, two of them who escaped. And also, welcome back Erin West of Operation Shamrock, who actually got a message she wasn’t supposed to see. And this is the story. So there’s a lot to talk about, but this week I really wanna focus on human trafficking. And you just posted big news about, I don’t know if I’m gonna say the name right, Shakilu.

Erin: You’ve got the, you are hot off the press. Yes. I just literally posted that and his name is Shakilu and I’m delighted to talk about this great success story.

Beau: Erin West has spent the last while doing something most people would never think of doing which is actually going to where these scams are happening. She’s been to Cambodia, the Philippines, Uganda, and she works with a whole network of other people who are also trying to solve this riddle of how do you stop a global scam epidemic.

Erin: So I’m in a group text with a lot of NGOs and people who are concerned about human trafficking, and there was a letter inside this group chat, and it was a man asking for help saying,” I am a Ugandan man. I was trafficked into a Cambodian compound. Every day, I target Americans, and I am being tortured and I want out. Can you please help?”

Beau: If you didn’t hear the first two episodes, I think it’s important just to… the lay of the land here is this: in Southeast Asia, we’re talking about Cambodia, Myanmar, and Laos; there are these special economic zones. And in these special economic zones, the laws that apply to the rest of the country don’t apply. Think of it kind of like Las Vegas. There’s casinos in these spots, but there’s also scam compounds and there are crime lords. Now, these scam compounds take up huge spaces. They’re like towns within a town. That’s where you get those phone calls, that’s where you get those texts, mostly texts that say, Hey, are you still meeting me for tennis today? Or, you know, the wrong number, right? But they’re not the wrong number, ’cause you seem nice and therefore let’s talk. And who knows, maybe we’ll fall in love. That’s the setting. How did he get this message out if he’s in a scam compound?

Erin: So, that’s the funny thing. There are different levels of security in different compounds. Like if you just read Andy Greenberg’s Wired article where he was talking to a man named Red Bull, Red Bull was able to freely come and go. But in most scam compounds, you do not have the ability to come and go, and in some scam compounds, you may have access to a phone and it’s a phone that you and your friends hide in your dorm, or they may even know you have a phone.

Beau: So it’s not the phone that they’re giving you to use to scam people. ‘Cause that’s probably tightly controlled. 

Erin: That is tightly controlled. Absolutely not. So the tightly controlled phone is the work phone. And that work phone at the end of your shift has to be charged and placed in the special location. I’ve seen them; there’s wall hangings that are numbered and you have a number where your phone needs to go at night.

Beau: So this is a contraband phone, like in prison, people make, you know, prison hooch outta prunes. This is the phone version of that.

Erin: That’s exactly what this is. And so he reached out and he said, I need some help. And he listed his WhatsApp, his brother’s WhatsApp, and two other WhatsApp numbers. And so I reached out to the group and I didn’t have any experience at that time with, what does it actually take to get someone out of one of these compounds? But I reached out. I said, is anybody handling this? And nobody put their hand up. And I said, well, this is my project, then. I I want to see if I can be helpful to Shakilu.

Beau: So you actually started with the problem set: how do you get someone out of a scam compound who wants to leave?

Erin: Exactly, yes. My first step was to reach out to both him and his brother on WhatsApp. And I was nervous about doing that because I’m well aware this is a contraband phone and I don’t want to call attention to him. But he did leave his phone number, so I reached out. I said, I’m an American and I would like to be helpful in getting you out of Cambodia. And I didn’t hear anything back. And then I reached out to his brother, and his brother got right back to me. And his brother and I started talking and I think there were about two weeks worth of conversations between the two of us.

Beau: And you guys are speaking in real time, actually talking?

Erin: Sometimes we’d talk and then most of the time we would text and first I just needed to establish that I was a legitimate person. So luckily there’s some press that I can send his way and show that I’m a legitimate person. And then I also have my Operation Shamrock website that I can lead him to. So I wanted him to believe that I was a real helper who wanted to get his brother home.

Beau: Now, where’s his brother? In Uganda, or also in a scam compound?

Erin: He is in Uganda.

Beau: So you reached out to the brother, the brother vouches for you, and then you just wait?

Erin: So finally, after about two weeks, Shakilu does respond to me that he feels comfortable talking to me. And so we begin chatting on WhatsApp and he starts sending me pictures. He gives me the coordinates of where he’s located.

Beau: All right, before we go any further, I mean, it’s important to understand that Shakilu is not alone in this. And the reason he got targeted is the same reason a lot of people are finding themselves in these scam compounds from Uganda. Why? Because they can read and write English, and they’re needed to grow these scam compounds’ revenue coming out of the United States.

Erin: I was a prosecutor for 26 and a half years. The last three years of my career, I did nothing but pig butchering cases. I dealt only with people who had lost everything they had, and many of whom had taken out loans on top of that. So I was seeing Americans get destroyed, and this level of destruction was like nothing I’d ever seen as a prosecutor. These people were self-harming. They were near suicide. They were completely emotionally bereft. It was the worst type of victimization I had seen as a prosecutor. And so the more I learned about what had happened to them, the more I realized, oh my God, this is happening in Southeast Asia at scale in an industrialized way, that there are massive compounds where people are being human trafficked in with this sole mandate of stealing money, and I had to see it for myself. I had to see it with my own eyes to understand the gravity of what was happening.

Beau: There was a point when these special economic zones realized there was more money to be made than just from gambling tourists coming out of China, and these scam compounds started targeting Americans.

Erin: They went to the American market and when they went to the American market, their Southeast Asian population, human-trafficked population that had been previously speaking Chinese to people, now needed English speakers and we’ve got English speakers in Uganda and Kenya. And so that is an easy, easy move. And what these bad actors look for is they look for people that need money and are willing to travel for it.

Small Q: After my high school, I was actually not looking for a job. I created my own job. It was an internet cafe because I loved to share, you know, my computer knowledge with the community.

Beau: Small Q is a musical artist and an activist from Kampala, Uganda. He was 23 years old when a regular customer at his internet cafe told him about a job opportunity in Thailand: data entry, $1,200 a month. And in Uganda, Small Q was making a hundred dollars a month. So it was attractive.

Small Q: $1,200 Is approximately 4.5 million Ugandan shillings. With that I could pay fees for my young siblings. I could help my parents with medication. I could pay for myself, tuition to continue with my studies because I’ve always dreamed to continue with my computer science and engineering course ever since I finished high school.

Beau: But to get that job, he had to go to Kenya first to get a Thai visa.

Small Q: You know, the Thai embassy, which we didn’t have in Uganda. So firstly, I had to travel to Kenya, a neighboring country in East Africa, and that’s how the process started. I got my visa, all so excited. I shared it with my, you know, family. Then I traveled after purchasing my own ticket to Thailand.

Beau: They told him they would reimburse him for the travel.

Small Q: I traveled to Kenya to get to receive my visa first. And when I came back to Uganda is when I purchased my ticket and I flew from Entebbe Airport to Dubai. I was promised that whatever I invest in this operation, I’ll be given it back to. So they told me, when you get to the company, they will refund your money. So I had to, you know, spend living in Kenya waiting for my visa. I had to purchase my ticket. I remember it was Emirates Airline. But unfortunately it was all lies. Guess what? I had to sell out every computer that I had in the internet cafe. I left nothing back. Just went with hope that I come back with something.

Beau: Small Q flew from Entebbe to Dubai, Dubai to Bangkok, where he was then met at the gate by a man who took him out to a fancy car.

Small Q: Immediately I got to the airport at gate eight. I remember. There was this car that came. There was this guy that came out very happy, you know, very welcoming. He was not speaking English, but he tried to communicate with me and that’s when I was led into a car. Then we set off from the airport. So from the airport, I was promised to be taken to the hotel to rest. Then the next day, I would meet my bosses. Now, just on the way, remember I was 17 hours on the flight. I was feeling so hungry, then asked this guy, can I get something to eat? He never knew English, so he had to pull out his phone. Then we started chatting using Google Translate, so that’s when he told me it’s okay, I can branch out off to a nearby restaurant. He was so charming, like he was like, friendly. We go, I got something to eat. Then we continued the journey. I kept asking him, when are we getting to the hotel? I feel so exhausted. And that’s when he branched off from the highway to a nearby warehouse where he met other colleagues that pulled me out of the car very aggressively, confiscated my bag, my passport, my phone, and everything that I had, and they made me kneel down for hours.

Beau: So what’s going on in your mind at this point?

Small Q: I was so scared. I didn’t know what to do. I started praying, like I was thinking a lot of things. I was like, have they abducted some someone wrong? Like is it a misunderstanding? Not until I saw another car that arrived at a very high speed. They got me in forcefully and we departed from this warehouse in the middle of the night. Then we went to a river where they made me cross, you know, in that coldness with a lot of [inaudible] that I was experiencing at that point. Then we crossed to the other side. There was a car that was waiting for us again. Like I spent 20 hours on road from the airport till we got to the… almost, because I departed from the airport at around 2:00 PM and I got to Myanmar in the morning around 10:00 AM.

Beau: But at the time he didn’t know where he was. The place where he was taken is one of the most notorious scam compounds on the Thai-Myanmar border.

Small Q: It was the first day when I asked my boss where I am and they told me, you are far away from home. You are in Burma. You cannot escape from this place. All you have to do is to work for us if you want to survive in this place. And those were the words of a supervisor I was introduced to. The moment I got into this company where I saw a lot of frustrated people typing on computers, very scared, being monitored by military personnels. And I got so scared. It felt like a military base. It felt like a prison at the same time. But my hope came back when I saw Africans, and actually they were Ugandans. So when I was introduced to the job, I actually failed to work. I was like, I am a gospel artist. I give hope to the people. How can I start even scamming people? I denied to work. And that’s when they called my boss. The guy electrocuted me for almost 20 minutes shouting in Chinese. I didn’t know what he was saying. Just explaining to me after, by the translator, that you have to sit and work for these people if you want to survive.

Beau: So how big was this scam compound where you were held against your will and forced to work?

Small Q: It’s around 20 acres inside the scamming center. There are a lot of companies, like a scamming center could have around 50 companies. Imagine a two story building with almost eight companies. So each large room on a big, big building is a company. So it’s a very big, huge place.

Beau: It sounds like a mall actually. Or maybe it’s a small town made up of scamming operations?

Small Q: A town. A town with supermarkets, a town with casinos inside it, a town with basketball courts. I don’t know; it’s a huge, huge place.

Beau: And are there westerners there or is it only populated by people who work at the scam compounds and the Chinese people who run it?

Small Q: I got to know that Africans, especially Ugandans and Ethiopians were recruited there. Then on the other side, it’s a lot of Chinese people from Sri Lanka. I witnessed a French guy, two Kenyans, and one Indian guy.

Beau: And they were all running these different scam companies.

Small Q: Yeah. And a company can have like a lot of people from different areas.

Beau: And how many people were in the company where you were being held captive?

Small Q: Around a hundred people in each company. 

Beau: And your work situation is… there are computers and phones and people guarding you with guns and with electrical devices to shock you?

Small Q: Working actually 20 hours a day without rest, 20 hours, almost 20. Sometimes they give you overtime, so after the 18 hours or 14 hours, you get two more extra hours or four hours, depending on what target you have failed to reach on.

Beau: So why were they walking around electrocuting people? What were you being tasked to do? How did they decide whether or not you did your job?

Small Q: The moment I got there, I was given around a hundred numbers and I had to convince these people that I’m friendly and we’ve met before, imagine. So I was in a picture of a lady called Madeline. Very beautiful girl, around 28 years old. Very rich, you know, with a very luxurious life. And now I was given numbers of men around 40 to 60 years. These men were almost in their retirement age, so that’s how the scam goes. It’s a beautiful lady that acts, you know, friendly to these people, then trap them into scams. So that’s how it goes. You be like, Hey, how are you? Those were the templates that were generated by AI actually, and they were given to us to seduce these people into relationships. So a template could be like, Hey, I miss you. It’s been a while. Do you remember me? You send a picture to this guy. When the guy sees you and you know, old men about, you know, beautiful ladies. They fall easy.

Beau: When Small Q learned what he was doing, he didn’t want to do it. Remember, he’s a gospel artist. He gives people hope. He doesn’t crush them. And so he refused to do it. And he was severely beaten and electrocuted and eventually sent to what they called the boss’s office to be dealt with directly, which it turns out put him exactly where he needed to be.

Small Q: I was able to steal a phone. It’s the iPhone SE that I’m holding right now. It’s one of the phones that we were using to scam people. These phones were stored in a certain room. It was the room actually of the boss that I was able to access after being taken there to be punished after denying working for, you know, several days. So that’s when I accessed this phone. I was able to steal it. No one witnessed me. Thank God for that. Then I logged onto wi-fi and I started communicating to people in the outside world. Started with my family till I was able to get the number of the ambassador of Uganda, Madame Betty Bigombe, and she’s the reason why I actually came out of that company. It was kinda dangerous. You could lose a hand or a life with that action, but I was brave enough because I tried to escape before. Like they captured me. They took me to one of the most dangerous prisons inside- actually this prison, there were more dangerous prisons, like, it was called the dark room. I spent there almost five days without eating anything. I was tortured. I was, you know, spitted on, I was denied to urinate. I was denied to use restrooms for all those days. I felt so disgusted. These people are heartless. That’s what I can say. I reached a point, I started imagining stuff. I imagined myself back home with my family. In that room, it was a torture room. They torture you psychologically and physically. They were beating me, if at all I tried to doze because one of the rules inside that prison, no sleeping. That’s the only word I heard from English, from those soldiers in Myanmar. They come to you, they knock you on the head with a baton. They tell you, stop sleeping. I was not alone in this prison. On my left, there was this Ethiopian guy that was screaming a lot, screaming a lot to be released. But I witnessed a Burmese soldier hitting him on the head till his last breath.

Beau: So it makes sense that you would take a risk to escape, and the phone was a risk you were willing to take?

Small Q: Definitely. This is like a souvenir to me. I remember the first text to my family. I can’t forget the tears my father shedded when he heard my voice after three months thinking maybe I had died, you know. It gave them hope. They tried everything they could. The news was surprised because I’m an artist where I come from. People love me. I was inspiring kids before. So the issue went to the parliament, and I’m glad by the point I communicated to the ambassador, Betty Bigombe, she knew about the issue and she promised me that- Actually, she said in her own words, I’ll get you out of that place, my children.

Beau: Through his family, Small Q reached out to Uganda’s ambassador to Thailand, and she connected with an organization called Global Alliance run by a man named Judah Turner, who knew somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody who could get the boss of that compound boss, whatever. They negotiated, they started to negotiate terms, and it started at $10,000 a person for 23 people.

Small Q: Which the government of Uganda couldn’t believe and couldn’t trust because these people were already scammers. There is a compound that I was sold to, it’s called the KK Park, one of the most dangerous parks on the border of Myanmar and Thailand. So this day came like any other day inside there thinking that I’m maybe woken up to go to work, and fortunately it was the day. It was the last day in this scamming compound. They read 23 names. We were a lot of Ugandans there, but they read 23 names and my name was first on the list. And we marched out of that compound. When we got out, I couldn’t believe it. What brought my hope back was seeing a huge bunch of passports that was held by one of the military guys. Then I knew it’s time to go back home. Finally, I shedded tears on the ferry to cross the river from the other side. This is a second chance to me. And finally, I was rescued that day.

Beau: They held the group in a Thai shelter for three weeks while the government verified their stories and then they flew home. Small Q made it out with a stolen phone, the help of an ambassador, and a negotiation that took months. Right around the same time in Cambodia, Erin West was in the middle of her own version of that story, but the trail went cold in that case.

Erin: And so once I got those coordinates, I could see using Google Earth where he was. And he was on the Cambodia/Vietnam border. And what occurred to me in looking at it was, you’re not far from the border, and I can see, if you can get out of this compound, you could probably run to safety on this dirt path that’s right there.

Beau: So how far we’re talking? Many of these compounds are in the special economic zones, right on the border of other countries. How far are we talking? A hundred feet? 200 feet?

Erin: Not much more than that. Yeah. I mean, it was right there. But he said, oh, but there’s no way I’m getting out. This place is filled with security. There’s literally no way I’m getting out of this compound.

Beau: Are you getting pictures at this point of the inside and what the security looks like or anything like that? Or just kind of his conditions where he’s communicating with you? Because I imagine he’s not bringing the phone with him to his workstation.

Erin: Correct because, and I didn’t know this at the time, they have them go through a metal detector coming in and out so that you’re not bringing a phone in and you’re not taking a phone out with you. And so he would say to me, I wish I could take pictures of what’s happening on the inside. But what he was showing me was the building itself, and then he was showing me the construction and this really dovetailed with what I had just seen. I had been to Cambodia five months prior, and I had seen the massive construction that was happening all over the country. So when he showed me that he was inside a compound with lots of construction, that all tracked with what I had personally seen. So he’s given me the coordinates for where he’s located. So I had been to Cambodia, and I had friends in Cambodia and I gave them those coordinates for them to go see what they could find out. So they went out there and they took pictures for me and they said we could not get anywhere near it, that it is highly guarded. It is highly fortified. It’s a very scary place, and we do not have the ability to to get in there at all. So knocking on the door was not going to be an option. So then I started reaching out to other NGOs who do this work and who have been successful in getting people out. And I asked them about the process. And the process essentially is, you need to go through a broker and the broker will negotiate for the safe passage out of someone. But that’s an expensive endeavor, and it’s thousands and thousands of dollars to get someone out because they’ve quote unquote, put that much money into them already. So you have to essentially buy them back. But that didn’t seem like something that was going to work for us either, because we really didn’t want to become the “we pay the ransom.” We didn’t wanna become known as the people who pay ransom. So that was not going to work. Meanwhile, Shakilu is sending me more and more interesting information. He sends me a plea in his own words, explaining that we’re real people in here and we’re being abused, and we are being forced to steal your money. And so he gave me the authority to use that. He had me use a voice changer on it, and I published that and that got some interest, but nothing was as easy as I thought about this. So we continued to talk and we continued to talk for months and share information, and he would let me know that he was becoming more and more injured in there. He was being beaten. He was being asked to stand for extended periods of time and his legs were really suffering as a result. And I knew that he had been a bit of a thorn in the side of his captors, and he told me he thought that he might be transferred to another facility. And then the next thing I knew he was gone and I didn’t hear from him again.

Beau: This transfer practice is one of the more perverse practices of the scam compound system. When a worker’s contract is about to expire, they’re moved to another facility, handed a fresh contract, and the clock resets. Another year, another term, another prison with different walls. That these operations even talk about expiring contracts is as crazy as the whole thing. Contracts. They do that, and I’ve also heard that the price to liberate a worker in some of these places can be as low as $3,000, but the families of the human-trafficked victims, they don’t have that three grand.

Erin: You’re exactly right. He was sold to another compound for $3,600.

Beau: So I assume you lost him.

Erin: He fell off the grid. I had a rare opportunity during this time and I was asked to go speak at a G-7 event, and I was the opening speaker and I really wanted to make this a human issue. And so I played his voice and his plea for help because there’s really nothing… But it was during that period of time where I hadn’t heard from him and months were going by and months were going by, and I became quite confident that he had been killed.

Beau: Let’s talk about what happened around this time. These crime bosses started to experience some friction.

Erin: People who were running scam compounds had seen that some had been raided, and a lot of the big bosses fled.

Beau: Well, there was a big arrest around then, right?

Bloomberg Clip: In January, a Chinese tycoon was arrested in Cambodia and extradited to China. Chinese authorities called him the ringleader of a major transnational crime and gambling syndicate. The U.S. and UK alleged that Chen Zhi oversaw a network of scam compounds that enslaved workers and stole from many across the world.

Erin: There was. The United States indicted a man called Chen Zhi. And in January of 2026, China stepped in and said, oh yes, we indict him also. And they extradited him to China. So the Cambodian world got a look at the fact that people weren’t invincible and that people could be arrested and that maybe this wasn’t as secure as they thought, and a lot of the crime bosses fled and they went into hiding or they picked up somewhere else, or they just moved to a different place in Cambodia and left their shop unattended and people walked out the door.

Beau: So the scam compound bosses and their armies took off. Workers, whatever you wanna call them. The Cambodian officials who made all of this possible were also on the run and the compounds in that area essentially opened their doors and the people who’d been forced to work there scattered. That’s when Shakilu resurfaces. He’s in the wind along with everyone else, but somehow he gets ahold of a phone. How’d that go down?

Erin: So he borrows a phone from a friend. He reaches out and he says, hi, it’s your friend from Uganda and I thought, wow. So I asked him a question only he would know the answer to, and that was, what is your brother’s name? And he told me. And then I realized, oh my gosh, this is him. And so we began talking again because now he was in a different predicament. And his predicament then was, “I have overstayed my visa” because he was supposed to have left Cambodia seven months ago. “And so I am subject to arrest, but I have nowhere to go. There’s no shelter, there’s no… it’s unclear how I’m supposed to get home,” so I reached out to a friend in Cambodia that runs a shelter and talked to him about it, and he was able to get Shakilu admitted to that shelter.

Beau: Oh, that’s amazing. And the shelter was a place where he was actually going to be shielded from any further trafficking?

Erin: Absolutely. Yes. So Shakilu went to that shelter and I was going to Cambodia at that time. So my first stop when I got to Cambodia was to see him in the shelter.

Beau: Amazing. Okay, so give us the coda. Shakilu goes home. That just happened, so-

Erin: Like literally he’s been home six hours. Yes.

Beau: Wow, that’s amazing. And went to his brother.

Erin: And went to his brother. Yes, he is back in, flew into Entebe and then went to see his brother.

Beau: When Small Q got home, he went and got some street food, something really familiar.

Small Q: It’s called a Rolex. You get chapati, you put in eggs and everything. So I missed that. So I remember when I was, you know, taking the first bite of it, I was like [singing] it’s been a long time from my family. It’s been a long time from my motherland. Truth is that I missed you and I know that you missed me too. But I’m back. I’m back. I’m back. I’m back. I’m back. Man, I’m back from hell on earth, hell on earth. I’m back from hell on earth, hell on earth. Yeah, I’m back from hell on earth, hell on earth. Hell on earth.

Beau: Erin, this is not over. Far from it. I mean, you met up with Shakilu, the two of you were touring the area looking at new construction, and you saw massive developments happening there. Apparently all these kingpins, these these gang leaders, whatever you wanna call ’em, they’re back in business. So you met up with Shakilu and I know that you were touring the area to look for new construction, and you saw some massive developments happening there. So apparently all these kingpins, these gang leaders, whatever you wanna call them, they’re back in business. 

Erin: Well, that’s the thing. I liken this to, we had The Super Bowl in San Francisco, Santa Clara County, and there was a sweep of the homeless people and we moved them out and made it look like we don’t have a homeless problem. And so that feels a lot like what is happening in Cambodia, that we will take down the massive compounds in the locations you know about, but all these fringe locations on the border that you might not have heard about yet, we’re gonna keep running those. Those are still very much in business.

Beau: And growing.

Erin: And growing. I have never seen anything like the compound that I saw at the Vietnam border that was just insane in terms of its height, its length, and the entire scam city that was being built around it with brand new boulevards and lights and stores. This was being built and is being built to be an outpost of Scambodia

Beau: And we’re talking about an area that could houses a hundred thousand people.

Erin: Without question.

Beau: Yeah, I mean, just to give you a sense of scale, this is the size of a middle to small, middle, you know, middle, small U.S. city. These are amazing concentrations of people and they’re all there to do one thing. And they’re all pointed at the United States now, aren’t they?

Erin: Well, I would say that except I’ve heard recently from some of the people coming out that there also are targets in Israel, targets in Brazil, targets in different parts of the world, Sweden. So it’s not just the United States anymore.

Beau: The pipeline that fed these compounds, Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, isn’t slowing down. In fact, the whole thing’s moving closer to those places and involving them more.

Small Q: Coming back with a lot of, you know, trauma, you know, tears inside me. Fear, nightmares. I felt like I should let out the silence. Now, seeing news like that made me one day speak about it in an interview because I was a musician. And the reception I got from the people… You know, there is this mom that called me and she told me I lost my son in a way like that. I’ve never heard from him for three months now. How can you help? That’s when I started, you know, knowing that this is a serious issue. I felt like this country, it’s also a victim. That’s why these people, you know, the Chinese syndicate and Chinese gang mafias use it as a way to, you know, to exploit the outside world. [singing] Left Africa looking for greener pastures, pastures, Abducted, enslaved 6 months in tortures, tortures, Then I stole an iPhone SE, Reason why I’m now free, Thank you Mama Betty, I’m now free, I’m now free, I’m now free. Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing, doing.

Beau: What does fighting them look like right now?

Erin: To fight these scam compounds, it’s a nonstop endeavor. It is. There’s no day offs when you’re fighting scam compounds because they’re not taking a day off. It’s all about getting awareness out, accepting any opportunity to talk about it, to educate about it. It’s about keeping law enforcement engaged and up to speed and having access to the latest technology that allows them to be better investigators, building capacity nationwide for them to do this type of investigation. The fact is, every time I speak about this, I ask people to look around because I don’t know your shop. I don’t know what you have access to that I don’t, but I know that you know something or have access to something that’s gonna make it a little bit more difficult, more expensive, more time consuming for these bad actors to do this work. It’s going to take all of us all of the time. There’s no one thing that is going to make this go away. I’ll tell you some things that have happened that have been influential, and that is the United States indicting a kingpin. That caused a ripple effect. Did it close down scamming in Cambodia? No. Did it disrupt it and make it and allow Shakilu to get out and get home? Yes, there are disruptions that can be done, and I think we need to not think of this as how are we going to win, but how are we going to make it more expensive, more difficult, more time consuming for them to do this work?

Beau: Winning the war against these scam compounds is possible. As with any war though, the first order of business is understanding the enemy, doing reconnaissance and putting that intel in front of the people who can use it to make plans. We’re in the very beginning of this war. Spread the word. Tell people what you know about that scam text they keep getting, Hey, how you doing? You know? There’s a person on the other end of that communication who needs our help.

Small Q: I wish the world had me and you times a hundred. We could end this very soon.

Beau: Now it’s time for the Tinfoil Swan, our paranoid takeaway to keep you safe on and offline. Now, we’ve been hearing about these scams, and I want to talk about two things that you can do, and they both actually are the reason this podcast exists. One is you can use something called Block Party. It’s an extension. It’s a browser extension that allows you to toggle and set your privacy on social media so that you are not sharing stuff with just anybody. And that really matters because a lot of scams are starting on social media and they’re starting on social media where everything’s wide open. They know who you know and can therefore create really good scams based on that, you know, kind of guessing at what kind of bait you’ll bite on. And the second one is is making sure as much of your personal information is private as possible. And you may know, you may have seen that your information is like kind of right there on people search sites. Well, you can get DeleteMe and have it removed. It’s as simple as that. DeleteMe was the New York Times Wirecutter’s number one pick for data removal. It works very well. And if you go to joindeleteme.com/wth and you sign up there, you’ll get a 20% discount. So it’s worth doing. Alright, that’s what we got for this week. I hope that you come back next week. I hope you’ll spread the word about these scam compound episodes and share them with people, because it really does matter and we really can make a difference. Okay, see you next week. This episode of What The Hack was produced by me and Andrew Steven, who also did the editing. What The Hack is a production of DeleteMe, which was picked by the New York Times Wirecutter as the number one personal information removal service. You should be using it already. If you’re not and you want to, well, you can. Here’s what to do. Go to join delete me.com/wth. That’s joindeleteme.com/wth and get 20% off. I kid you not. 20%, 20% off. That’s joindeleteme.com/wth. And some of the music in here, it’s by Small Q, and you can find that music by Small Q on any streaming service out there. Please go listen to it. It’s on YouTube too, and if you can find his Patreon, you should do that too. All right. Have a great week.

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