That Call Center Tech Scammer Could Be a Human Trafficking Victim

Human trafficking to staff cyber scam call centers, once isolated to Southeast Asia, has expanded beyond the region, according to an Interpol investigation revealing new evidence of abuse in South America and the Middle East. Previous hotspots since 2021 were Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar. From a report: The latest five-month operation discovered that victims from Malaysia were being trafficked to work in Peruvian call centers and Ugandan victims were being trafficked to Dubai for the same reason, only to be diverted to Thailand and then Myanmar. Police in Telangana, India, recently registered their first case of human trafficking for the purposes of cyber fraud. An accountant was lured to southeast Asia to work for a cyber fraud operation before eventually being returned in exchange for a ransom payment.

Interpol said that in Myanmar alone, it identified trafficking victims originating from at least 22 different countries, although most come from the country's Kayin and Shan states. Operation Storm Makers II has led to hundreds of arrests and the rescue of more than 140 individuals, although the scale of the threat is much larger; many of the 360 investigations remain open and ongoing. Fake job ads luring victims with promises of high pay for light work in IT, marketing, modeling, and other roles now utilize AI translation tools to target non-Chinese speakers, expanding the victim pool, according to the report.

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