Tens of thousands of people from China, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam have been lured into human trafficking by phony job ads and then forced by Chinese criminal syndicates into defrauding people in America and around the world out of millions of dollars through cyberfraud operations, reports ProPublica. Those who resist face beatings, food deprivation or electric shocks, according to the Global Anti-Scam Organization, a nonprofit founded last year to combat the new form of fraud.
The organization estimates that at least 1,838 people in 46 countries have lost an average of about $169,000 since June 2021 to scams known as “pig butchering”, which relies on the effectiveness of relationships and trusts nurtured on social media and the ease with which currencies can be moved electronically. Fraud operations often have links not just to organized crime but also to a country’s political and business elites. The governments of China, Indonesia, Pakistan, Thailand and Vietnam have issued warnings in recent months about high-salary job offers emanating from Cambodia.