Those online scammers are victims themselves

Those online scammers? Many are victims of trafficking and forced labor by brutal gangs

What you probably already know: You’ve gotten the texts: “Hi Mike. How are things going these days?” The goal is to get you to respond, and eventually, scam you out of money. What you probably didn’t already know, though, is that the scammers behind these and other cyber frauds are actually victims themselves. A recent Wall Street Journal piece dove deep into the world of cyber scams and found that many of the people behind these schemes have been trafficked to Myanmar and Cambodia for “forced criminality.”

Why? The WSJ spoke to a man who goes by Billy, who had been forced to pretend to be a wealthy Singaporean woman named Alicia. His job was to seduce men online and get them to hand over money into fake investments. United Nations says hundreds of thousands of people have been similarly forced into this kind of labor. They are often beaten and abused if they are not able to bring in money.

What it means: Many of the scammers are holding up in what the WSJ called a “lawless corridor” of jungle-covered mountains on Myanmar’s eastern border, where drug, weapon and wildlife smugglers have set up shop. Recently, these same groups have discovered it’s actually easier and less risky to simply trick people out of money. These groups have built entire business parks where the forced laborers are held.

What happens now? The prisoners are held under threats of violence, and so are often afraid to reach out for help. Their devices are monitored by their captors, making outreach even more difficult. The government of Myanmar says it’s working with authorities to curb this criminal element, but the U.S. Institute of Peace says those same government authorities are actually protecting the gangs who run these forced labor camps.

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