Human Trafficking and the Scam Economy

It started with a job offer: $1200 a month for data entry. Then it turned into a nightmare. 

Small Q is Ugandan. He was making about $100 a month. The job offered enough to put him and his siblings through school and help his parents with their medical needs. All he had to do was fund his own flight to Thailand, and he would have a whole new life ahead. 

That was what he was promised. As he revealed in this week’s episode of What the Hack, the reality was very different. 

From job applicant to human trafficking victim

At first, everything seemed fine. A friendly man met Small Q at the gate of the airport in Bangkok and even took him out for lunch. En route to Thailand, his “guide” diverted and brought him to a warehouse in the middle of the night, where everything went wrong. 

More men showed up, forced Small Q into a car, and brought him to a compound on the border of Myanmar and Cambodia. There, he was given a series of phone numbers and told that his new job was to scam Americans. 

When Small Q refused to take part, he was beaten and tortured. His captors imprisoned him in the “darkroom,” where he survived for days without light, without food, and without even a place to go to the bathroom. 

Eventually, he managed to get ahold of an iPhone SE and contact the world outside the scam compound, which led to his eventual release for the price of $10,000. 

Small Q’s father wept tears of joy when he heard his voice for the first time in three months. Since then, Small Q has become an activist who speaks for thousands of others who are still in captivity.

Escaping the scam compound

Small Q’s story is far from isolated. 

The “wrong number” text on WhatsApp? There’s a good chance it comes from a victim of human trafficking like Small Q. Scam compounds in Southeast Asia imprison hundreds of thousands of individuals who are forced to scam for 14-20 hours each day or suffer beatings, starvation, and eventually, death. 

One of the most popular scams that comes out of these compounds is pig butchering. Pig butchering refers to a sophisticated, long-term financial confidence scam where fraudsters “fatten up” a victim before “slaughtering” them by stealing their entire investment. Erin West described it on this week’s episode as one of the most devastating crimes she’d seen in all her years as a prosecutor. As of 2024, it had already cost victims $75 billion. 

It was in Erin’s efforts to combat pig butchering and bring down the compounds that facilitate it that she came into contact with Shakilu. 

Shakilu was another victim brought in by promises of a legitimate job and forced to work long hours while enduring beatings and torture. He stole a phone and communicated with Erin for some time, telling her about the conditions behind the walls of the compound and asking for help to escape, until one day he dropped out of contact. 

Months later, he reached out. This was around the time of the U.S. indictment and the eventual arrest of Chinese crime boss Chen Zhi, who allegedly ran several compounds. The indictment showed that these traffickers weren’t beyond the reach of enforcement from foreign nations. Scam compound bosses went into hiding, and a few left the doors open back home, letting some workers like Shakilu escape. 

The ordeal wasn’t over when Shakilu got out, however. He had no way to get home and was at risk of being arrested in Cambodia, since his passport had long since lapsed. Erin was able to work with friends on the ground to get him into a shelter and eventually bring him back to his home country. 

Unfortunately, most victims remain in captivity in new compounds, out of reach of their home governments and U.S. enforcement alike. 

Is it possible to close down the compounds? 

As Erin explained, the war against this kind of trafficking is a war of attrition, and it will be slow and difficult. Every successful pig butchering scheme and tech support scam funnels money into the compounds that continue to imprison and torture countless people. The best anyone can do right now is make it harder, more expensive, and more complicated for scam centers to continue trafficking even more victims. 

On that note, tell someone, anyone, about this episode of What the Hack. Tell them about the very real people still stuck behind scam compound walls. 

Give to NGOs that combat human trafficking. 

Write to lawmakers and governments to encourage an organized response to the human trafficking crisis. 

Spare some compassion for the person on the other end of that scam text or phone call, who might not be there willingly. 

We can shut down scam compounds. But it’s not something any one organization or one person can do alone. It starts with intel and learning as much as we can about the tactics and failures that allow the compounds to thrive. It starts with services like DeleteMe that help reduce your digital footprint and make it harder for scammers to target you. 

One thwarted scam, one escape, one arrest, one indictment, one enforcement effort is enough to make a difference. 

So is one more person speaking out.

Learn more: 

• Listen to the full podcast episode and read the transcript to hear more about how some people are fighting back. 
• Check your exposure online with our free scan. 
• Learn more about Southeast Asia’s scam compounds.