Scam Inc 2: Opportunity of a lifetime

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Scam Inc 2 – "Opportunity of a Lifetime"

Economist Podcasts | The Economist
Date: February 8, 2025
Host/Reporters: Sue Lin Wong, Sam Colbert

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Episode Overview

In this gripping episode of the Scam Inc series, The Economist delves deep into the inner workings of Southeast Asia’s scam compounds—exploring the personal journeys of those who unwittingly become low-level perpetrators of international cybercrime. Through firsthand accounts from scam workers trafficked into Myanmar, listeners gain harrowing insights into the criminal underworld’s scale, the sophisticated emotional and technical mechanics behind “pig butchering” scams, and the blurred lines between victim and victimizer in this rapidly growing illicit industry.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Human Faces Behind the Scams

• Victims Turned Perpetrators:
  The episode foregrounds the stories of Rita (Philippines), Jalil (Uganda), Sarah (South Africa), and Gavesh (South Asia). Each was drawn to what appeared to be legitimate job opportunities in Thailand, only to be trafficked into Myanmar and forced into scam operations.

• False Promise of Opportunity:

  • Rita, a single mother, sees a Facebook ad for a customer service job offering free travel and accommodation (04:25).

    "So I said yes. It's like hypnotizing me that I want to travel… I can see the elephants… plus the work." (05:15 - Rita)

  • Jalil, recruited by a friend, dreams of supporting his pregnant girlfriend and is excited for his "opportunity of a lifetime" (05:45).

2. The Trafficking Journey

• Both Rita and Jalil describe escalating unease as their journey to Thailand veers off course—drivers who speak no English, lengthy detours, and ultimately, being smuggled across a border river into Myanmar under the threat of armed guards (09:17–11:35).

  "It looked like a prison because it had guards everywhere. It has towers where they could stand and see, with guns, it had gates. It was really secure." (11:39 - Sarah)

• The emotional toll is immediate:

  "I didn't know where I was… even if someone told me, 'go back to where you've come from,' I could not find my way." (08:25 - Jalil)

3. Life and Structure Inside the Scam Compounds

• The compound is isolating and controlled, holding myriad recruits from across Africa and Asia. Office blocks and “company towns” mask a world of coercion (13:28–14:41).

  • All possessions confiscated; strict surveillance; rigorous internal hierarchy.
  • Color-coded ID tags denote one’s rank—blue for base workers, yellow for translators, red for team leaders, black/ash for upper bosses (34:45–35:10).

• Living in Continuous Fear:

  "Every day we sleep. Every day we wake up, we think to ourselves, okay, this might be my last day." (33:04 - Gavesh)

4. Mechanics of the “Pig Butchering” Scam

• Scripted Deception:
  Workers are handed scripts and trained to build fake romantic or business relationships with targets online. They assume detailed backstories, research local landmarks to support their false identities, and follow psychological playbooks to spot vulnerable, wealthy individuals (17:36–26:02).

  "They gave me a script that I had to act like an Asian woman that's very rich… changing your whole life, changing your whole thinking." (22:55 - Sarah)

  • Focused on targeting white Americans, avoiding black Americans due to racist assumptions about wealth (25:42–26:05).

• Advanced Technical Tools:

  • Deepfake filters are used for video calls (28:31).
  • Social engineering techniques to move victims to encrypted apps once a platform’s anti-fraud tools activate (28:02).

5. Monitored, Monotonous, and Dangerous Labor

• Relentless Schedule, Brutal Oversight:

  • Recruits forced to work up to 16-hour days, monitored continually, even on Christmas and New Year’s (29:55–30:10).

  • Attempting to leave incurs enormous “fines” (ostensible ransoms of $30,000+)—none can afford it (30:30–30:43).

  "If we do not work properly, the office that I'm working can sell me to a different office." (33:57 - Gavesh)

  • Actual, physical punishments for underperformance: forced exercise, electrocution, threats, disappearances (31:25–32:51).

  "There was a lot of punishments in there. Like, you don't hit your targets, they electrocute you… they would come and electrocute you." (31:32–31:58 - Jalil)

• Existential Threats and Rumors:

  • Colleagues disappeared or rumored to have had organs removed.
  • Sex work threats for women who failed to meet quotas (34:24).

6. Organizational Structure and Scale

• Multiple criminal “companies” operate in sprawling, walled compounds in Myanmar, running an array of scams side by side.

• Bosses are almost all Chinese; kingpins operate at arms’ length, often from outside Myanmar (36:23–36:36).

• In the end, the episode underscores the workers’ victimhood within this system—they were trafficked, abused, and forced into criminality.

  "You are slaves in there." (33:44 - Jalil)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Trauma of Entrapment:

  "At one point I thought maybe I should just run away. But then I also remembered… if I run away, I could die out there… so let me just wait for this and if it's dying, it's okay. I've accepted my fate." (08:38 - Jalil)

• On the Guilt of Scamming:

  "We are praying that don't invest, don't invest. But they keep investing because they see that they are winning." (29:11 - Rita)

• On Systematic Racism in Scam Targeting:

  "We are not allowed to speak in black Americans." (25:42 - Rita)
  "It's not hard to guess why. This is racism… Only white Americans." (25:50 - Narrator)

• On Day-to-Day Existence:

  "We're sold to another company. Well, in there people are sold. You are slaves in there." (33:44 - Jalil)

• Revelation of the Compound’s Nature:

  "The compound can be owned by some tycoon somewhere who is not even in Myanmar or not even in Thailand." (35:23 - Jalil)

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Timestamps of Key Segments

• 01:47–03:04: Introduction to Rita’s and other workers' backgrounds and the money they scammed.
• 04:25–06:38: Recruitment process and the false promises of jobs in Thailand.
• 07:10–11:17: The journey, escalating confusion, and fear as recruits are smuggled across borders.
• 13:17–14:41: Arrival and orientation within the scam compound.
• 17:24–25:42: Scam training—psychological scripts, targeting methods, and racist policies.
• 28:31–29:11: Use of deepfakes and attempts by some workers to subtly warn victims.
• 29:55–32:51: Grueling labor, punishments, threats, and the impossibility of escape.
• 33:44–35:30: Worker “sales,” compound hierarchy, and bosses’ distance from the front lines.
• 36:23–36:36: The role of Chinese organized crime and glimpses of decadent, boss-only compound areas.

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Tone & Language

The reporting is urgent and empathetic, blending calm journalistic narration with the raw fear, hope, and regret voiced by the interviewees themselves. The language remains accessible but emotionally charged, capturing both the horror of exploitation and the sophistication of the criminal machinery at work. The narrative is laced with resigned humor, survivor’s guilt, and a deep investigative curiosity.

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Final Notes

This episode powerfully complicates the narrative of online scams, showing that at the lowest levels, the “scammers” are often as much victims as those they target. It vividly exposes how organized crime exploits economic desperation, technological globalization, and political chaos—turning dreams of a better life into nightmares of trafficking and violence.

For a deeper understanding of how these operations are run and who commands them, the series promises further revelations in its next installment.

Transcript

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[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

The Economist. Previously on Scam Inc. Who was the.

[Jalil Muyeke]

Other side of it?

[Gavesh]

That's something we've had little to no communication on.

[Jalil Muyeke]

Basically, I will never know who was on the other side of that phone. This person approached me, a lady who supposedly was working for one of these large consulting firms.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

Do you know anything about her?

[Jalil Muyeke]

No, not at all. Not at all. I mean, for the real person.

[Gavesh]

No.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

How long did it take you until you had your first successful scam?

[Rita]

1 and a half months.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

This woman I'll call Rita, is from the Philippines. She's a single mother in her early 30s. So in total, how much money did he put in?

[Rita]

$78,000.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

US$78,000?

[Xani Minton Beddoes]

Yes.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

That's a lot of money.

[Rita]

Yes.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

Remember Edgar from the last episode? The guy in Canada who got scammed over LinkedIn? He had no idea who was really behind the messages he received. But that $78,000 Rita was talking about a moment ago, well, that was Edgar's money. Rita isn't the Singaporean marketing executive she told she was. Rita is short with braces and hair dyed golden brown. The day I meet her, she's in a peach coloured T shirt and jeans with big pockets. She lives with her parents. They're helping her raise her daughter.

[Rita]

I played as a professional individual in my part on our team. We will act as a professional and successful businesswoman.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

She told me that to become a successful scammer, she had to play a role carefully. Following a detailed script on the first.

[Rita]

Week, the foreigner will need to ask, what are you doing in your life? Why you are so rich?

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

She'd built a fake profile bolstered with.

[Rita]

Photos of good food that you are in a Louis Vuitton shop like you are having a nice home like that.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

But Rita wasn't eating good food and shopping at Louis Vuitton. Not even after hitting the jackpot with Edgar's 78 grand. That's because Rita isn't the hardened criminal you might expect. You see a crime, then you identify a criminal. That's how things normally work. But in the underworld of scamming, everything is more complicated. And to understand just how complicated and who the scammers really are, you have to go back to the beginning of Rita's story. From the Economist. This is Scam Inc. Episode 2 An opportunity of a Lifetime. Rita told me that her story of becoming a pig butchering scammer started in July of 2022. She was looking for a new job.

[Rita]

So I searched on Facebook. Then there I saw a post like hiring CSR agent bound to Thailand.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

It was a customer service job and a pretty well paid one. At a call center in Thailand. The ad looked legit. There was certainly no mention of cyber fraud. Rita had been a kindergarten teacher and then worked in customer service. But this job abroad would be a chance to make more money for her family.

[Rita]

And what caught my attention is that free lodging, free food and all travel expenses will be shouldered by the employer.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

She applied and she got the job. The company asked for a copy of her passport. Within days they sent her a plane ticket.

[Rita]

I asked how many months or years is the contract? And she said six months. So that's. Wow, six months only. And then I will come back to Philippines. That's great. So I said yes. It's like hypnotizing me that I want to travel. I want to see the elephants there like that. That's the thing inside my mind that I can go to the airplane, I can go to Thailand, I can see scenery plus the work.

[Jalil Muyeke]

It was exciting because I knew I had landed on an opportunity of a lifetime. And I was traveling to another country and first time getting on a plane. That was a big deal for me.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

Jalil Muyeke is from Uganda. He also got a job offer in Thailand. His story started a year later, but it was remarkably similar. He found work through an old friend, someone he'd gone to school with. The friend had moved to Thailand and told Jaleel the Company was recruiting and.

[Jalil Muyeke]

If you can come, they would love to have you because you speak good English and they want people who speak English. What we shall basically be doing is data entry and online marketing.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

Jaleel's girlfriend was pregnant and this would be a chance to spend a few months making extra money for the family.

[Jalil Muyeke]

So we arrive in Bangkok.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

After landing in Thailand, Jalil breezed through immigration.

[Jalil Muyeke]

They didn't ask any questions.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

Jalil had travelled down with another Ugandan guy. Another recruit, a driver would be meeting them at the airport.

[Jalil Muyeke]

When the driver saw us, he also came towards us. He had our pictures, but then he didn't speak any English at all, just showed us our picture and then took our bags, put them in the car and asked us to get in.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

The driver told them through a translation app, we'll drive for an hour before stopping for food.

[Jalil Muyeke]

So in my head I'm a little confused because I had done some little research before we left and I had read that from the airport to Bangkok was approximately 20 minutes. So and now this guy was saying we would drive for approximately one hour and get something to eat. I just gave it the benefit of doubt and thought that, yeah, maybe he's taking a longer route. Maybe we're fast passing somewhere.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

After an hour, they pulled over to eat at a kfc.

[Jalil Muyeke]

And then after that we got back into the car. So the guy says, still on his phone, he says we're gonna drive for about eight hours to get to our destination. So that scared me. It scared me like real bad.

[Rita]

We were already five hours in land travel. Oh, my God. This is already five hours. I'm asking, I'm still in Thailand. Am I still in Thailand, But I cannot communicate with them because they cannot speak in English. They are Thailander.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

So what were you thinking during that time?

[Rita]

I want to escape. I want to escape already because I cannot contact my recruiter already.

[Jalil Muyeke]

I didn't know where I was. I didn't know where I was going, even if someone told me, okay, fine, go back to where you've come from. I could not find my way.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

After a day of driving, Jalil and his companion were taken to a remote hotel for the night.

[Jalil Muyeke]

At one point I thought maybe I should just run away. But then I also remembered as we were going there, I was seeing a lot of ponds and rice fields. And I thought, maybe if I run away, I could die out there anyway. So let me just wait for this and if it's dying, it's okay. I've accepted my fate. I messed up because there were red flags in the start, and I should have been intelligent enough to see them, but then I didn't see. So it's already bad. So it is what it is.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

In his hotel room, Jalil pushed the bed against the door and spent a sleepless night. The next day, someone came to pick him up.

[Jalil Muyeke]

They put our bags in the back, and then they asked us to get in. And then we start driving.

[Rita]

We traveled for one hour again. When we arrived, there were civilian. Who has a gun? They all have guns. Then we are not allowed to open our flashlight, but it's so dark and grass are talls. Then we were asked to duck, to crawl, to go down behind the river.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

Behind a river?

[Rita]

Yeah, we will go to the river because we will cross that river.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

Oh, you had to crawl down to the riverbank?

[Rita]

Yes.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

And then wait to get on a boat?

[Rita]

Yes.

[Sarah]

And then when we stopped, there was like, you know, rowboat.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

Sarah was hired from South Africa. She'd been a tutor until the COVID pandemic disrupted her business. She too, had responded to an ad for a customer service job in Thailand. Sarah's not her real name, and she's asked that we alter her voice.

[Sarah]

On the other side of the river, they were unmanned with, like, huge guns. That's when I knew that, okay, this is not gonna go down the way I hoped. So I remember I was so scared and I froze that my knees got weak. I couldn't move.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

One of the other recruits, an Ethiopian guy, had to pick her up and help her into the boat.

[Sarah]

At first, I remember my friend saying to me, they're gonna sell our kidneys. They're gonna make us dodges. I told him, just keep quiet. Just keep quiet. Just keep quiet. So I knew from then that, okay, it's either they gonna cut me open and sell my organs or I'm gonna be a sex slave, you know, I didn't know what was gonna happen, but I knew it was something bad. From then, I just went to a survivor mode. Like, how am I gonna get myself out of the situation?

[Rita]

I'm just saying to myself, this is the last time. This is the last time I will go abroad like that. After this. Enough. I will not dream of bigger dreams. I will just stay on my country like that.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

Because if you go abroad, something bad could happen.

[Rita]

Yeah, like that.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

On the other side of the river, they were told to get into another vehicle.

[Sarah]

And then we got to this place. It looked like a prison because it had guards everywhere. It has towers where they could stand and See, with guns, it had gates. It was really secure. They went through our stuff. They took our laptops and took our phone and they took our passport.

[Jalil Muyeke]

We enter the gate and inside the gate immediately. You enter the gate, you see it's a whole town.

[Sarah]

They have like flats where we could stay. They had companies where they built where we're going to work. They had a shopping center there, a supermarket. They had clothing shops.

[Gavesh]

The full compound was protected by I think like a 20ft wall.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

G, also not. His real name is from South Asia. He had a job in the hotel industry until Covid. So he responded to a job ad on Facebook and now here he was. When he stepped inside the walls, he saw big office blocks and then there.

[Gavesh]

Were buildings with cafeterias, restaurants, bakeries, saloons, cloth shops. They had everything inside.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

The compound was in many ways like a conventional company town.

[Jalil Muyeke]

Took us to a supermarket. They bought us some basic necessities. They bought a 1 inch mattress, bed sheet and a blanket, toothpaste, toothbrush, some sandals, and then took us to the dormitory.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

Jahlil was brought to a small room with four bunk beds.

[Jalil Muyeke]

There was one Indian, there was one Nepali, and there was one guy from Indonesia.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

He encountered people from all over the world. Dormitories, full of them.

[Gavesh]

Each building has four floors. One floor has around 16 rooms and each room has four bunk beds. And those dormitories, there were like more than 10 buildings just for the dormitories.

[Jalil Muyeke]

Then within like around 10 minutes, my friend who I knew came.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

Jalil finally saw his friend, the one who'd gotten him the job.

[Jalil Muyeke]

When he saw me, I think he saw I was scared. I remember the first thing he told me was, do not be scared. Nobody is taking your kidneys. It's like he had read my mind.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

Jalil was relieved to see him, but angry.

[Jalil Muyeke]

You told me I was going to Bangkok and now here I am. I don't even know where I am in the first place. I was escorted by soldiers to get here. So tell me what is going on? So that's when he told me. We are in Myanmar. My heart skipped.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

Rita, Jalil, Sarah and Gavesh had all taken the same journey. They'd been driven north from Bangkok to a town called Mae Sot. And they'd been put on boats and ferried across the Muay River. That river forms the border between Thailand and Myanmar. Myanmar's a dangerous place. There's been an almost continuous civil war waging for decades. Especially in its border regions. Warlords rule their little fiefdoms. A Military junta controls the capital and a few other major cities. It has been trying, with little success, to impose its rule across the rest of the country. And among that instability, criminal industries have flourished. Gambling, drugs, prostitution.

[Jalil Muyeke]

The whole place is a war zone. When we're in there, sometimes you would hear gunshots and blasts of what seemed to be like bombs.

[Sarah]

Sometimes the bomb was like really close. Like we shook a bit. Yeah, that's how scary it was.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

Resistance groups were battling the ruling junta. And in those lawless border areas, criminal conglomerates carried on as usual. Though not quite as usual. There was another complication. Covid. If you run a casino, a pandemic is bad for business. That accelerated investment in a new revenue stream. And it turned out to be an incredibly lucrative one.

[Sarah]

The guy said to us, do you know what you're going to do here? Then I said, yes, I'm going to be a customer service in English. You know, we for tech and gold trading company. That's what they told us. Then the guy said, no, that's not what you're going to do.

[Gavesh]

So on the first day, I had nothing to do. They just gave a computer and there were four word documents. And I had to read and go through those four word documents. I had to read them carefully again and again and again. When I was reading it, what I understood is like. It's like it's just a normal chat between two people. They got in to know each other online. Hi, how are you? I saw your photo. I like that color. How is the weather? Blah, blah. This initial conversations, which is moving on to flirting and the love stage. Okay, you are my. This one. You are my sunshine. You are my love.

[Rita]

My team leader told me to observe first the two Filipinos who were working already. I saw already that they are into love scam.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

Love scams?

[Rita]

Yeah.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

They were here to perpetrate pig butchering scams. The same kind of fraud that had ensnared Shane, the Kansas bank CEO, and Edgar in Canada, who Rita scammed.

[Sarah]

I said to him, what do you mean I'm gonna scam people? Then he'd say, no, you need to convince people and to invest into crypto.

[Jalil Muyeke]

They had these slogans they would always chant before we start work every day. And it was something like, cripple the US and the European economy. And then I don't know if it is what he said or it's just a translator who added it. But then he said, this is World War Three.

[Sarah]

Foreign.

[Xani Minton Beddoes]

Hello, I'm Xani Minton Beddoes, editor in chief of The Economist. Thanks so much for listening to Scam Inc. I hope you're enjoying it as much as I am. One of the reasons I think this podcast is really terrific is that it's the best kind of Economist journalism. Sue Lin and her colleagues are joining the dots across geographies between business and politics. And that's what we do at the Economist more broadly, whether it's the impact of President Trump's policies or of artificial intelligence, what my colleagues do is to try and join the dots and then we give our subscribers the results of that thinking and that reporting in whatever form they want, whether it's the weekly Economist, whether it's daily analysis or short form video, or indeed subscriber events, and of course, access to all of our podcasts. And we've done a lot of award winning, superb podcasts. I'm really proud of all of this journalism. I hope we're taking the best of what the Economist has done now for more than 180 years and are translating it into the mediums of today. So sign up search for the Economist. Now back to the story.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

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[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

Over the past few years, gangs in Myanmar have been scamming foreigners on an industrial scale. I've seen satellite images of these compounds. You look at an image from a few years ago and there's almost nothing. A couple of shacks and some fields. Now there are neat clusters of hundreds of warehouses, offices and apartment blocks. On his first day of work, Jahlil was led into a large office. It looked like a call centre. There were long tables with banks of computers lined up. Employees sat quietly, looking straight ahead. He was shown to his seat and handed four iPhones.

[Jalil Muyeke]

So they gave us a script, they gave us pictures of this beautiful lady, pictures of her in nice hotels, beaches, driving fancy cars. And then they asked us to get as many dating sites as possible.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

He was told to create profiles on dating sites using this woman's photos.

[Jalil Muyeke]

And then to my surprise, in like about one hour or two, the lady walks in. And it's the very lady I'm seeing in the Pictures and she's right there.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

These weren't photos stolen from social media. They were of this woman. She was working at the compound there in case the so called customer wanted a video chat.

[Jalil Muyeke]

Most of the people who had scammed was because of that video call. They would get excited and then after they call, everything they are asked is just. They would be open to anything.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

In the meantime, Jalil would be the one at the keyboard playing a character. He was given a script, a backstory for this woman he'd pretend to be.

[Jalil Muyeke]

She was supposedly from Belarus as she had moved to the US five years back. She had one daughter who she had left back in Belarus with her parents. She had recently gotten divorced before she moved to the US and she had an uncle who worked in Wall street and she was a fashion designer who dabbles in crypto. So that was a script. Everything else, we were allowed to be creative.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

Like Jalil, Sarah was made to create profiles, but hers were on social media, Facebook X and Instagram.

[Sarah]

They gave me a script that I had to act like an Asian woman that's very rich. An Asian woman that stays in Chicago or California. I need to know everything that happens in California. I need to know the grocery store, I need to know the nearest hospital, I need to know the nearest service station. It was changing your whole life, changing your whole thinking. So you need to be in that woman's shoes. It was too much that you start forgetting your own life. You know, you just living in this dream world, like in an entirely different world.

[Gavesh]

We go to that person's profile and if the profile is open, then we can see all the details of him. If he's a rich guy, if he has money or what is his job.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

Gavesh found his targets over social media too.

[Gavesh]

Then only we send you the friend request and then we go through your photos. We say, okay, that is lovely. Oh my God, are you single? You look handsome. Blah, blah, blah.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

GVESH says they sometimes hijacked real profiles, ones that wouldn't seem suspicious to Facebook's anti fraud algorithm.

[Gavesh]

They don't want us to send friend request as soon as possible. First we have to create a chat. So for example, if you have put a photo of you with the headphone on. So if I'm presenting as a girl, then I would comment as like, oh my God, are you into recording stuff? Something like that.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

The next job was to mine the Internet for particular emotions.

[Sarah]

Lonely people spend a lot of time on social media.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

What ties together? Everyone I spoke to who got scammed Is something very simple. A stranger made a connection with them. Not necessarily a romantic or sexual one, but something that made them feel seen, understood.

[Sarah]

So we had to find people that were vulnerable, people that didn't have a support system, someone that was actually long di no. And we needed to find someone from the age of 40 to 65.

[Jalil Muyeke]

You're chatting with someone and they are telling you everything about their life. You're chatting with someone, he's telling you, I have cancer, I may not live for long. You're chatting with someone, is telling you, I lost my wife just a few weeks ago. You're chatting with someone, he tells you, my wife left me and she took everything. And you really see that a person has some money and they are willing to do anything to multiply that money. So if you bring for them an investment opportunity, they will most definitely jump into it and it is the only money they have.

[Rita]

We are not allowed to speak in black Americans. We were not allowed.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

Not allowed to speak to black Americans?

[Rita]

Yes. We are not allowed. I don't know why.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

It's not hard to guess why. This is racism. An assumption that black Americans will have less money. Racial profiling was part of the playbook. Only white Americans.

[Rita]

Yes, white Americans only.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

Rita sent me documents, word docs and spreadsheets. They were training materials she'd been given. One had conversation prompts on books, music, gardening, football. Some topics were more pointed. What profession do you work in? Do you like to travel? They were questions designed to discern a target's wealth. Ask about their house, their car, where they went to university. They should be rich, but not too good looking. This type of man will be very attentive when meeting a woman. The instructions said it was a complete playbook for how to connect with others. There's guidance on how to establish intimacy, like pay compliments to the customer. Mirror their tone. Greet them every morning, say goodnight when they go to sleep. Learn about them, find out what's lacking in their life, what's the emotional hole you can fill? And relate your own sad stories, maybe about a former spouse who cheated on you. Create sympathy. I'm thinking here of Karina in California, whose scammer would shower her with attention while spinning a web of of lies about his own difficult past. Finally, project an image of sophistication. Reveal hints of your own lavish lifestyle and be classy. Rita's instructions said, if you're running a scam in which you found your victims on LinkedIn like she did, don't send nude selfies until after they've invested. Another document is a primer on cryptocurrency. Yet another is a step by step guide on how to prevent your Facebook or LinkedIn account from getting flagged and taken down and what to do if it does get scrubbed.

[Rita]

You must get their telegram number or WhatsApp number because our account in LinkedIn can be blocked because it's a dummy account.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

These techniques have been honed and they're accompanied by a suite of high tech.

[Sarah]

I even had to be a voice caller because we had guys as well, so they couldn't call their customers. So I had to call for their customers and all that.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

Sarah would talk on the phone to men her male colleagues were messaging with.

[Sarah]

They have a computer system that I can make a video call. I would look exactly like an Asian woman, which I'm not.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

She could deep fake herself on video calls, changing her appearance with a filter.

[Sarah]

One thing I tried to do was to try and warn people, you know, in a way that they wouldn't be suspicious. I would write these long sentences and I would even tell to them, you know, before you go on with this, you need to just investigate, just check if it's something you would like to do. So to them, they thought I was building more trust. But for me, I was trying to warn this person that, please don't do this.

[Rita]

We are praying that don't invest, don't invest. But they keep investing because they see that they are winning.

[Gavesh]

We can't say anything to them because everything is monitored.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

Bosses were watching their WhatsApp chats, so.

[Jalil Muyeke]

I would always go back to the dating app and send them a message. This is a scam. Just disconnect on WhatsApp. But then if you show any sign, if you say anything on WhatsApp that I've told you about this, I'll be in trouble.

[Sarah]

There were cameras everywhere, so you never had a privacy. So even if you're working, we had an armed guard that was walking around to see what you do on your computer.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

The work was relentless.

[Gavesh]

Initially, we were working for 12 hours a day. If we were not able to find any customers, they can ask us to work extra. So there were times that we actually worked for like 16 hours a day, more than 16 hours a day.

[Jalil Muyeke]

That was for seven days a week. Even on Christmas Day, we were working New Year's Day, we were working.

[Gavesh]

When we asked to leave from that place, they gave us a big bill saying, this is what we cost for you to take here. So you pay this bill and then you can go.

[Jalil Muyeke]

I started Telling them, guys, I want to go back home. I told them, I want to go back home. And they told me, if you want to go back home, you have to pay a fine of $30,000. Ransom.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

Bosses demanded a ransom to release them. Ransoms they couldn't possibly afford. Workers did receive a salary, but it was nothing close to the wage they'd been promised. And even that would get whittled away every time.

[Gavesh]

They will tell some stories saying the dollar rate is up. Or we had to pay for your food, we had to pay for your this, we had to pay for your Facebook account, we had to pay for your Instagram accounts, we had to pay for your dating apps, blah, blah, blah. And they will cut our salaries.

[Jalil Muyeke]

Sometimes they don't even give you anything because there have been so many deductions.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

Fail to perform and the consequences could be severe.

[Sarah]

If you mistakenly tell something to the customer and the customer doesn't talk to you, they say you've killed the customer, you get punished.

[Jalil Muyeke]

My productivity went low. That is when the punishment started coming in. There was a parking lot outside, and that place is. It's really hot there. So they would make you run around the parking lot with a scorching sun. There was a lot of punishments in there. Like, you don't hit your targets, they electrocute you. They had these tasers. They would come and electrocute you.

[Rita]

We have colleagues there that we just didn't see them.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

They just disappeared?

[Rita]

Yes. Ethiopian, Chinese and one Vietnamese. We just woke up one day. They didn't go to work and they.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

Weren'T scamming enough money.

[Rita]

They cannot scam.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

The three of them weren't able to scam.

[Rita]

Yes.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

And so do you think they were killed?

[Rita]

Some of them telling us that their kidneys were sold? Because we have one Ethiopian there is still there.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

His.

[Rita]

One kidney lost already.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

One of your colleagues? Yes, Ethiopian is Ethiopian. And he didn't have a kidney.

[Rita]

Yes, because she said it was sold. Because he cannot. He cannot scum.

[Sarah]

There were some people that disappeared a few brake roads. They said if you make them really angry, they'll kill you and throw in your river. And no one know where you are.

[Gavesh]

Inside that compound is. Every day we sleep. Every day we wake up, we think to ourselves, okay, this might be my last day.

[Jalil Muyeke]

In the fifth month, we're all sold.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

Jahliel wasn't having any success. The friend who'd recruited him had left a couple of months into Jalil's time there. Jalil doesn't know how he got out. I've heard that the criminals sometimes let people leave if they're able to recruit others to replace them. Jalil was demoralised. He was self sabotaging. In fact, his whole company seemed to be struggling.

[Jalil Muyeke]

We're sold to another company. Well, in there people are sold. You are slaves in there.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

They were sold to another company within the same compound. So was Gvesh.

[Gavesh]

I was sold three times. If we do not work properly, the office that I'm working can sell me to a different office. So we just have to take our stuff, go to the other building.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

Gvesh says different companies were running different scams. One ran fake shopping websites. Another ran a fraudulent online job scheme. But pig butchering was at the centre.

[Sarah]

So as time goes on, they said to me, I really need to add the numbers of customers because if I don't, they're going to send me to the second floor. So we knew that a second floor is where they send all the ladies to be sex workers.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

These businesses comprised entirely different sorts of criminal operations, sometimes side by side with scamming.

[Gavesh]

There were bosses. There were char guys, there were drivers.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

Everyone was made to wear a tag. Your tag's colour denoted your role. Low level workers like Gvesh wore blue. Translators were in yellow. Team leaders were in red.

[Gavesh]

And then one level up they were wearing black tags. And then the ash colored tags.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

In his many months inside, Gavesh only saw the ash colored tags a few times. But even those people had bosses. Jalil would hear rumors about the kingpins at the top of the pyramid.

[Jalil Muyeke]

The compound can be owned by some tycoon somewhere who is not even in Myanmar or not even in Thailand.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

Over their months in the compounds, Rita, Gavesh, Jalil and Sarah got occasional peeks behind the curtain. They would learn that this operation extended well beyond their office or even the compound it occupied. There wasn't one scam town in Myanmar, but several. It was only afterwards that each of them would learn which they had been in. They were at the lowest level of this network. They'd been lured to Myanmar, trafficked and in some cases sold. In a sense, they were as much a victim of all this as the scam targets abroad, like Shane Haines, the Kansas bank CEO. And these low level scammers were left mostly in the dark about who was really in charge. But to them, there was one thing about this murky, sprawling business that was clear.

[Gavesh]

The place was run by Chinese. The bosses were Chinese.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

And for the bosses, the scam compounds were a very different kind of place.

[Gavesh]

It's incredibly debaucherous, bright lights, luxury over the top, decadence.

[Jalil Muyeke]

It's that kind of hellhole.

[Narrator / Reporter (Sam Colbert or Sue Lin Wong)]

So what's going on in the rest of the Scam complex? And who had tricked Rita, Gavesh, Jalil and Sarah into becoming scammers in the first place? That's on the next episode. Scam Inc. Is reported, produced and written by Sam Colbert and me. Our senior producer is Alize Jean Baptiste. Our sound designer is Weidong Lin and the music is composed by Darren Ng. Editing is by Claire Reed and Rosie Blore with help from Heidi Pett. Our executive producer is John Shields. To get in touch, email podcastseconomist.com and put scam Inc. In the subject line. I'm Sue Lin Wong, this is the Economist.

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