Human trafficking job scams targeting Malaysians 😠and others to Cambodia and Myanmar 卖猪仔

Last time is kidnap to become beggar, now is kidnap to become scammer

I've been reading about the recent in the news human traficking job scams and was very surprise in modern day Malaysia 2022 it is happening and young naïve chinese Malaysian youths are being targeted. 

The scam starts off as a Facebook ad promising a high paying job overseas working as a customer services executive / marketing executive to market some online products/ services (eg online casino, games). Once the victim contacts the scammers for the job, the victim will be added into a telegram chat and instructions and details on the job will be given. Once the job is accepted, the victim will be transported to Thailand (using passport) by the scammer's team, and in Thailand, the victim will be smuggled over via car/boat across the porous Thai /Myanmar (Mae Sot) or the Thai/Cambodia border. The victim's passport will be confiscated by the scammers after being smuggled over the borders. The area where the scam centers are being operated seem to be spread around the former "Golden Triangle 金三角" area bordering Myanmar, Cambodia and Thai. This area was and still is an area notorious for Opium production and smuggling. There's some reports that there are scam centers in the seaside town of Sihanoukville in Cambodia.

Once crossed the borders, the victim will be forced to work at an illegal call center to scam people. Apparently, Malaysian victims are highly sought after due to their ability to converse in English. The Malaysians job is to scam people in European and Western countries and their shift are from 4PM to 4AM.

Behind the scene, the victims were sold off by for RM20,000 - RM30,000 and can only be released after paying or earning RM200,000 to RM300,000 for the scammers syndicate. Most of the victims range from as young as 15 years old until 25 years old and are of male Chinese descent.  It is found that a lot of these victims already got themselves into some form of money issues (eg online gambling debts, credit card debts) before registering for the scam job and hence the desperation to get a high earning job. 

As the victims are at faraway conflict zones and guarded by armed personnel's, their chance of escaping is quite slim and the only way to be freed is for their families to pay off the ransom to earn their freedom from the syndicate. There's a small chance there will be government to government intervention to rescue these victims given the attention this news has garnered lately.

The people behind the scam syndicates have deep ties with the local authorities and army personnel and hence they are protected from the law's net. These syndicates are even more notorious that the ones in India where people are just lured into scam call centers based on job offers. The syndicates have other businesses like online gambling, prostitution, human trafficking and organ smuggling gigs also.

Updates 20220523

Some of the Malaysian victims were rescue after the buyout fee was paid. Apparently payment were done using Western Union. I was expecting payment to be done using some form of cryptocurrency like USDT.

With recent attention given to this job scam cases, the law enforcement authorities are aware of these scams already. There's not much the police can do for now but they can work with Interpol on these cases.

According to rescued victim, they were required to create profiles of fake young beautiful woman (bai fu mei 白富美) to do social media/phone scams on other people back in Singapore and Malaysia.

Apparently these human trafficking scams to recruit scammers also happen to Vietnamese, Thai, Indian and Taiwanese nationals. 

The modus operandi for hiring with such diversity is where Vietnamese victims are lured to lucrative jobs in Cambodia and then they are asked to scam their own Vietnamese compatriots instead and being held captive.

Updates 20221001

This father says his son is stuck in Northern Myanmar. He's a Malaysian Malay and so it's confirmed that the scam rings syndicate do not just target Malaysian Chinese but also other races. Next time phone rings and is a scammer speaking in Malay, don't be surprised that the scammer is operating right from Myanmar.

If you see these kind of adverts where location is in Mae Sot, Myawaddy province in Myanmar, be very careful as this area is known to be where all the scam criminal organizations are based. Once you go there, your passport will be seized, and you have to work as a phone scammer. If you want to be free, you have to find big money to trade yourself.