Transcription
[Music]
This is a story about corruption and greed.
Yeah, I mean, it's a billion-dollar industry—a secretive, vast, sometimes deadly enterprise where failure to meet targets can end in torture. The level of torture that these people receive is worse than any horror movie that's ever been.
We're going to take you to the very heart of a criminal network, going undercover inside Southeast Asia's scam centers for the very first time.
We won't have any problems with police; it's okay.
An exclusive investigation into a gated world worth billions of dollars. There are countless financial victims worldwide, but this isn't a story about them.
How did you feel duping people?
We're heading, um, a little bit south of MOT into an area that we know as Tai Chang. It's commonly known also as Mountain View. For us, it's one of the worst compounds that exists in terms of human rights violations—absolute torture of their victims.
Judana is on a mission. He's in Thailand; over the river is Myanmar, where thousands of people are working in prison-like compounds known as scam centers. Their job? To defraud people online. But they're not all criminals; some are trafficked, tortured, thrust into cyber slavery.
What we often hear about is this "black room" or this "dark room." It's essentially a windowless dark room where the victims are taken in. They're often chained with their hands handcuffed above their heads, hanging from a ceiling. They are then not given food, they're tasered, and they're unable to sleep.
How do you go about getting people out?
The reality is the majority of them have to pay exorbitant ransoms. Their families sell everything. Judah's the first hope for those fleeing. Recently, he's been getting a lot of frantic calls, many tracing back to a little-known compound called Tai Chong.
You can see it just across the border.
I think it's a good idea if we just walk. I want you to actually see and experience the gravity of what it is that we're talking about because this compound has been built within the last 18 months. You're talking about, as far as you can see this way, all the way to the green roof building there. You can see land being cleared behind it, which only means [Music] expansion.
Two things I'm really struck by are just how vast it is, but also it's there in plain sight, so close to this Thai border.
Yeah, you can almost reach out and touch it, right? And yet it's untouchable. You can't get in, and nobody can get out.
Is this, in fact, the place the world should be watching?
Absolutely. This compound is without a doubt the worst. It is essentially hell on Earth.
The scam compounds are often run by the Chinese Mafia, supported by militias in Myanmar. Those who don't generate enough money for their bosses can be brutally punished. The UN estimates hundreds of thousands of people are working inside these fraud factories across Southeast Asia.
The types of scams that are being run inside the scam centers are often focused on dating and relationships. They use many platforms, but behind most of them, it's about gaining some kind of trust with somebody in another country by pretending to be someone you're not. By gaining that trust, they encourage them to join some kind of investment or cryptocurrency investment, building on that investment and that trust until eventually, they've exploited them for all of their money.
The notorious KK Park is one of many compounds that was able to grow and prosper along a lawless border in a country wrestling with civil [Music] war.
These three men have just left. Three guys just leave KK4, so I take them, take them, leave, and send to immigration.
But Imig Sammy is a volunteer trying to stop human trafficking.
Two years ago, if you wanted to leave KK Kang, you had to pay about 30,000 to 50,000 US to leave.
How much did it cost them?
2,500 US.
Not really high, but to really understand the current dynamics, you have to cross from Thailand into Myanmar, where conflict rages and cyber scams thrive.
We've been granted rare access to YTI New City in Coco, a sprawling frontier of compounds and casinos. But the city management wants to show us this is a normal town with nothing to [Music] hide.
This feels like a little China. Everywhere you look, there are signs in Mandarin. A lot of the people on the streets and in the shops are Chinese too. It's almost like a vast outpost, and yet it's one we know that Beijing, in part, is wrestling with along its border with Myanmar.
In the North, China has cracked down on the scamming industry, but it's money from the Chinese underworld that still drives it.
YTI says that's not what's going on here.
Suspicion, though, is high. Phones are checked, and we're escorted everywhere.
Y's chairman wants to talk.
You say you're just the property developer, but you do profit from these compounds. Do you think that it's your responsibility to crack down more forcefully? Do you accept that scamming has gone on in YTI City in compounds and that some people have been trafficked here?
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There's been so much pressure on making sure that the human trafficking side has been snuffed out and that there's no longer the sense of abuses or hiring underage children. The role in which YTI and Schoko have played seems to be benefiting the anti-human trafficking movement.
There is a public effort to combat forced labor here, but Y's founder, Seri Jang, was only recently sanctioned by the UK government, accused of links to scam centers and human trafficking.
One rescuer also told us this building is currently home to a significant scam operation. The bars there prevent people from jumping. They clearly want to show the world that they're more open now, that working conditions here are better.
The problem is we can't get into the compounds to see what the reality of life is like inside. We know that fraud factories exist across the region, but we need to work harder to get a close-up look.
So we've been tracking one key area in Cambodia, near the border with Vietnam. It's called Bevet, and it's home to some shocking stories.
Scammers rarely talk on camera, but this man, who we're calling Pum Dry, has agreed to lift the lid on a murky world.
He's Thai, but until recently, he was a romance scammer in Bevet, targeting lonely people to invest, stealing their hearts and then their money.
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In Cambodia, illegal gambling, love scams, and crypto fraud are booming. It can be lucrative, but with rampant growth comes brutal targets.
PJI became a scammer by falling victim himself to a romance scam, lured by a Thai recruiter who's now under investigation. He was passed around compounds until one fateful day he was accused of stealing.
We want to find the compound Pum Dry nearly died in, but it won't be easy. They're highly secure places—hard to get in, even harder to get out.
Here, around 40 Vietnamese people flee the Golden Phoenix Casino, hoping they can swim back to Vietnam.
Ben, who's from the UK, says he also worked there.
Until I was in there, I had no idea. I've been in Cambodia a long time now. Up until the point where I was in the compound, I never heard of a compound before. I never heard of a scam factory. It was like a whole different world just appeared in front of me.
I had an altercation with another staff member, and then I got punished. I was called into the office, handcuffed to a chair, and the security team was called in. I was electrocuted with tasers for maybe five minutes.
We decide the only way we'll expose what's really happening in these heavily guarded compounds is by pretending we want to work in them.
We're on our way to a building where we know, two years ago, nearly 250 people were rescued. We've been told that a scam operation is still going on there, so we're going to go and see what we can find out.
We walk in, posing as people looking for jobs—online work, online, online, online.
There's a heavy security presence. A steady stream of workers passes through a metal detector.
Will we be okay?
The police rescuers have told us about scammers fleeing here, but we can't get any further without an [Music] appointment.
Scam centers are almost impenetrable, constantly changing names and locations. But we want to keep going.
We've heard Bevet is the new hub. It's on the border with Vietnam—a fortress-like city. We're going to try to infiltrate.
It feels kind of otherworldly being here. Everywhere we look, there are gambling adverts and these huge casinos, and then behind them, these mysterious buildings and seemingly very little else.
Down a dusty road, we find the building where Pum Dry says he worked, was detained, and fled.
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Doctors eventually helped him escape and return to Thailand after two days.
We have a lead. We've been reaching out to recruiters today, and we've just had a call from one who says they're willing to meet to discuss possible work.
We're going to see what they have to say.
They are surprisingly unguarded and unfiltered.
The scam "pig butchering" tricking victims to fork out more and more money before going in for the kill—it's big business.
Some scammers sign up willingly on the promise of big salaries and bonuses.
What kind of work?
Maybe mod and the Sal here—more than 800—all the same, like as to people to invest with the kill.
The romance scam—who is the best country to harangue and take money from?
Because they like, nobody gets arrested. But the police won't stop anybody.
The police?
Yeah, no, I never see the police coming.
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That night, they arranged for us to do a job interview.
We're met at a casino and driven to a compound. We're then asked to sit down with a man they call the boss, the head of HR, and two other employees.
They admit what they do is illegal from the off.
You have to know what job we have here.
Yeah, can you explain that?
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We are doing the USM.
Oh, US more. You see, if you get the B Cent, you get more commission.
Oh, yeah?
And how long? How many days a week?
Six days a week, 24.
How much does the person that earns the most SC do?
Do you teach? Do you train here?
No training?
Yeah, we have training here.
This is your master. If you come to work, your master is the guy with experience to kill the client.
Put like billion of what kind of script do you follow?
What? How to win the man?
How to see in the first day, in the second day, in the third day?
Or he like, why did you tell the DI?
The asking, what problem is?
Why you with the girl?
The man can tell you the in the thinking you already [Music] grow.
After a lengthy chat, the team agrees to show us the [Music] accommodation.
Next, we're exposed to something we thought we'd never see—the highly secretive scam [Music] rooms.
Some are Vietnamese people; most are Chinese people—all like [Music].
We see scammers with lots of phones conducting multiple conversations with victims online.
[Music]
It's hard to know if other workers got a guided tour, but it revealed more than we ever expected.
It was very strange seeing that world up close. I was surprised at just how organized and structured it felt. You had these rows and rows of people, all focused on ultimately deceiving people around the world.
Now, across the border in Thailand, the cost of the industry is crushing.
Cher says his brother, Chia, died falling from this compound in Cambodia. He believes he was pushed.
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There is a vast range of scam centers and scammers—some greed-driven, some desperate, some deeply [Music] sinister.
Prosecutions, though, are rare. China has started to chase some of the worst offenders. Cambodia claims it has two, but the industry still booms in plain sight, with new compounds constantly emerging.
What started as a regional crime is now a global trafficking crisis with millions of [Music] victims.
We reached out to those responsible for the compounds featured in this documentary. We also contacted the Cambodian government. None of them responded to our requests for comment.
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