2. Opportunity of a lifetime

Summary

Scam Inc – Episode 2: Opportunity of a Lifetime

Released on February 6, 2025

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Introduction

In the second episode of Scam Inc from The Economist, host Sue-Lin Wong delves deeper into the burgeoning underground scam economy, uncovering how individuals are systematically recruited and coerced into becoming scammers. This episode, titled "Opportunity of a Lifetime," focuses on the harrowing journeys of Rita, Jalil Muyeke, Sarah, and Gavesh—three women and one man—from diverse backgrounds who fall victim to a sophisticated recruitment scheme promising lucrative overseas employment.

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1. The Alluring Recruitment Tactics

The episode opens by illustrating the deceptive recruitment methods used to ensnare unsuspecting individuals.

• Rita's Recruitment:

  • Rita, a single mother from the Philippines, recounts her experience searching for a better job opportunity. She found a seemingly legitimate advertisement for a customer service role in Thailand on Facebook, which promised free lodging, meals, and covered travel expenses.
  • Rita ([04:06]): “I saw a post like hiring CSR agent bound to Thailand. The ad looked legit. There was certainly no mention of cyber fraud.”

• Jalil Muyeke's Recruitment:

  • From Uganda, Jalil was approached by an old school friend who informed him of the job opening, emphasizing the opportunity to support his pregnant girlfriend.
  • Jalil ([05:48]): “If you can come, they would love to have you because you speak good English and they want people who speak English.”

• Gavesh's Recruitment:

  • Gavesh, originally from South Asia, was lured with promises of high pay as he transitioned from a hotel industry job disrupted by COVID-19.
  • Gavesh ([04:26]): “What caught my attention is that free lodging, free food and all travel expenses will be shouldered by the employer.”

Notable Quote:

• Rita ([05:15]): “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.”

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2. The Deceptive Journey to Myanmar

Once recruited, the journey deviates drastically from what was promised, leading the recruits into a precarious situation.

• Extended Travel:

  • Instead of a short flight to Bangkok, Rita and Jalil find themselves in prolonged travel with unexplained delays.
  • Rita ([06:40]): “This is already five hours. I'm asking, I'm still in Thailand. Am I still in Thailand?…”

• Arrival in a War-Torn Region:

  • The recruits are driven to a remote area near the Myanmar border, amidst ongoing civil conflict.
  • Rita ([15:04]): “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.”

Notable Quote:

• Jalil ([07:29]): “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?”

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3. Life Inside the Scam Compound

Upon arrival, the recruits are confined within a fortified compound disguised as a company town.

• Structure and Surveillance:

  • The compound features warehouses, offices, apartment blocks, and facilities akin to a conventional business environment but under stringent control.
  • Workers wear color-coded tags indicating their roles, with higher authority figures donning black or ash-colored tags.

• Living Conditions:

  • Dormitories are overcrowded, and basic necessities are provided minimally.
  • Sarah ([12:24]): “Each building has four floors. One floor has around 16 rooms and each room has four bunk beds.”

Notable Quote:

• Jalil ([09:36]): “Resistance groups were battling the ruling junta. And in those lawless border areas, criminal conglomerates carried on as usual.”

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4. The Mechanisms of the Pig Butchering Scam

The heart of the operation revolves around the pig butchering scam—a methodical approach to defrauding victims.

• Creating Fake Personas:

  • Recruits are trained to adopt elaborate fake identities, complete with detailed backstories and sophisticated online profiles.
  • Jalil ([21:01]): “I need to be like an Asian woman that's very rich… changing your whole thinking you need to be in that woman's shoes.”

• Engaging with Victims:

  • The scammers establish emotional connections with targets through dating sites and social media, gradually manipulating them into investing in cryptocurrency and other fraudulent schemes.
  • Rita ([24:23]): “You're chatting with someone, he's telling you, I have cancer, you're willing to do anything to multiply that money.”

• Technical Strategies:

  • Use of high-tech tools like video filters to maintain the illusion of authenticity during interactions.
  • Jalil ([27:56]): “We have a computer system that I can make a video call. I would look exactly like an Asian woman, which I'm not.”

Notable Quote:

• Sarah ([24:03]): “Lonely people spend a lot of time on social media. So we had to find people that were vulnerable.”

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5. Coercion and Exploitation Within the Compound

The working conditions within the compound are harsh and exploitative, with constant surveillance and punitive measures for non-compliance.

• Forced Labor and Punishments:

  • Workers endure extremely long hours, sometimes up to 16 hours a day, with no respite during holidays.
  • Punishments include physical abuse, such as electrocution and forced labor under scorching sun.
  • Rita ([31:02]): “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 ([31:28]): “They have tasers. They would come and electrocute you.”

• Financial Exploitation:

  • Promises of high earnings are voided by ransoms and deductions from minimal salaries.
  • Rita ([30:00]): “If you want to go back home, you have to pay a fine of $30,000.”

Notable Quote:

• Gavesh ([30:26]): “Fail to perform and the consequences could be severe.”

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6. The Hierarchical Structure and Global Reach

Beneath the compound's immediate environment lies a vast and intricate network of scam operations.

• Organizational Hierarchy:

  • Workers are unaware of the top-tier leadership, though they surmise involvement of international tycoons.
  • Rita ([34:53]): “The compound can be owned by some tycoon somewhere who is not even in Myanmar or not even in Thailand.”

• Diversified Scam Operations:

  • Multiple companies within the compound run different types of scams, all interlinked but operating under a unified pig butchering strategy.
  • Gavesh ([33:26]): “Different companies were running different scams. One ran fake shopping websites, another ran a fraudulent online job scheme.”

Notable Quote:

• Sarah ([35:53]): “The place was run by Chinese. The bosses were Chinese.”

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Conclusion

Episode 2 of Scam Inc paints a chilling picture of the global scam industry's dark underbelly. Through the personal narratives of Rita, Jalil, Sarah, and Gavesh, Sue-Lin Wong exposes the elaborate recruitment processes, coercive working environments, and the sophisticated scam operations that exploit both the workers and their victims. The episode concludes by hinting at deeper layers of the scam network and the elusive figures orchestrating these criminal enterprises, setting the stage for an even more revealing exploration in the next installment.

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Notable Quotes Summary

• Rita ([05:15]): “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.”

• Jalil ([07:29]): “We were already five hours in land travel. Oh my God. This is already five hours. I'm asking, I'm still in Thailand.”

• Jalil ([09:36]): “Resistance groups were battling the ruling junta. And in those lawless border areas, criminal conglomerates carried on as usual.”

• Jalil ([21:01]): “I need to be like an Asian woman that's very rich… changing your whole thinking you need to be in that woman's shoes.”

• Sarah ([24:03]): “Lonely people spend a lot of time on social media. So we had to find people that were vulnerable.”

• Rita ([31:02]): “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.”

• Gavesh ([30:26]): “Fail to perform and the consequences could be severe.”

• Sarah ([35:53]): “The place was run by Chinese. The bosses were Chinese.”

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Looking Ahead

As Scam Inc continues, listeners can anticipate further unraveling of the complex networks behind the scam operations, shedding light on how these illicit activities are intertwined with global financial systems and corrupt political landscapes.

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Produced, reported, and written by Sam Colbert and Sue-Lin Wong, with contributions from Alize Jean Baptiste, Weidong Lin, Darren Ng, Claire Reed, Rosie Blore, Heidi Pett, and executive produced by John Shields.

For more information or to engage with the production team, email podcastseconomist.com with "Scam Inc" in the subject line.

Transcript

[Su Lin Wong]

Strap in. You're in the race with F1TV Premium. See what the race director sees with custom multiview. Watch every jaw dropping moment in Live 4K UHD across up to 6 screens. Uninterrupted experience. Ultimate live immersion with F1TV Premium. Available on selected devices. The Economist previously on Scam Inc. Who.

[Jalil Muyeke]

Was the other side of it?

[Rita]

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

[Su Lin Wong]

Basically, I will never know who was.

[Jalil Muyeke]

On the other side of that phone.

[Rita]

This person approached me. A lady who supposedly was working for one of these large consulting firms.

[Su Lin Wong]

Do you know anything about her?

[Rita]

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

[Su Lin Wong]

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

[Gavesh]

1 and a half month.

[Su 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?

[Gavesh]

$78,000.

[Su Lin Wong]

US$78,000?

[Gavesh]

Yes.

[Su Lin Wong]

That's a lot of money.

[Gavesh]

Yes.

[Su 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 Edgar 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.

[Gavesh]

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

[Su 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.

[Gavesh]

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

[Su Lin Wong]

She'd built a fake profile bolstered with.

[Gavesh]

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

[Su 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.

[Gavesh]

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

[Su Lin Wong]

It was a customer service job and a pretty well paid one at a call centre 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.

[Gavesh]

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

[Su 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.

[Gavesh]

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.

[Rita]

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.

[Su 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.

[Rita]

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.

[Su Lin Wong]

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

[Rita]

So we arrive in Bangkok.

[Su Lin Wong]

After landing in Thailand, Jaleel breezed through immigration.

[Rita]

They didn't ask any questions.

[Su Lin Wong]

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

[Rita]

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.

[Su Lin Wong]

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

[Rita]

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.

[Su Lin Wong]

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

[Rita]

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.

[Gavesh]

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.

[Su Lin Wong]

So what were you thinking during that time?

[Gavesh]

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

[Rita]

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.

[Su Lin Wong]

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

[Rita]

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.

[Su 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.

[Rita]

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

[Gavesh]

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 tall. Then we were asked to dock, to crawl, to go down behind the river.

[Su Lin Wong]

Behind a river?

[Gavesh]

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

[Su Lin Wong]

Oh, you had to crawl down to the riverbank?

[Gavesh]

Yes.

[Su Lin Wong]

And Then wait to get on a boat.

[Gavesh]

Yes.

[Jalil Muyeke]

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

[Su 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.

[Jalil Muyeke]

On the other side of the rear, they were unmanned with, like, huge guns. That's when I knew that, okay, this is not going to 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.

[Su Lin Wong]

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

[Jalil Muyeke]

At first, I remember my friend saying to me, they're gonna sell our kidneys. They're gonna make us soldiers. I told them, 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. It was something bad. From then, I just went to a survivor mode. Like, how am I gonna get myself out of the situation?

[Gavesh]

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 in my country like that.

[Su Lin Wong]

Because if you go abroad, something bad could happen.

[Gavesh]

Yeah, like that.

[Su Lin Wong]

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

[Jalil Muyeke]

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.

[Rita]

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

[Jalil Muyeke]

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

[Sarah]

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

[Su Lin Wong]

Gavesh, 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.

[Sarah]

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

[Su Lin Wong]

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

[Rita]

It 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.

[Su Lin Wong]

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

[Rita]

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

[Su Lin Wong]

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

[Sarah]

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.

[Rita]

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

[Su Lin Wong]

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

[Rita]

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.

[Su Lin Wong]

Jalil was relieved to see him, but angry.

[Rita]

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.

[Su 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 is 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.

[Rita]

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.

[Jalil Muyeke]

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

[Su 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 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.

[Jalil Muyeke]

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, 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.

[Sarah]

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.

[Gavesh]

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

[Su Lin Wong]

Love scams?

[Gavesh]

Yeah.

[Su 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.

[Jalil Muyeke]

I said to him, what do you mean I'm going to scam people? Then as you know, you need to convince people and to invest into crypto.

[Rita]

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 the translator who added it, but then he said, this is World War 3.

[Su Lin Wong]

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[Xanny Minton Meadows]

Hello, I'm Xanny Minton Meadows, 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. Su 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.

[Su 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, Jahliel 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.

[Rita]

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.

[Su Lin Wong]

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

[Rita]

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.

[Su Lin Wong]

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

[Rita]

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.

[Su 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.

[Rita]

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 like Jalil.

[Su Lin Wong]

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

[Jalil Muyeke]

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 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.

[Sarah]

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.

[Su Lin Wong]

Gvesh found his targets over social media too.

[Sarah]

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.

[Su Lin Wong]

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

[Sarah]

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.

[Su Lin Wong]

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

[Jalil Muyeke]

Lonely people spend a lot of time on social media.

[Su 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.

[Jalil Muyeke]

So we had to find people that were vulnerable, people that didn't have a support system, someone that was actually long, the anal. And we needed to find someone from the age of 40 to 65.

[Rita]

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.

[Gavesh]

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

[Su Lin Wong]

Not allowed to speak to black Americans.

[Gavesh]

Yes, we are not allowed. I don't know why.

[Su 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.

[Gavesh]

Yes, white Americans only.

[Su 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.

[Gavesh]

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

[Su Lin Wong]

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

[Jalil Muyeke]

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.

[Su Lin Wong]

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

[Jalil Muyeke]

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

[Su Lin Wong]

Fake herself on video calls, changing her appearance with a filter.

[Jalil Muyeke]

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 those 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.

[Gavesh]

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

[Sarah]

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

[Su Lin Wong]

Bosses were watching their WhatsApp chats, so.

[Rita]

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.

[Jalil Muyeke]

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.

[Su Lin Wong]

The work was relentless.

[Sarah]

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.

[Rita]

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

[Sarah]

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.

[Rita]

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.

[Su 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.

[Sarah]

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.

[Rita]

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

[Su Lin Wong]

Fail to perform and the consequences could be severe.

[Jalil Muyeke]

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.

[Rita]

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.

[Gavesh]

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

[Su Lin Wong]

They just disappeared?

[Gavesh]

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

[Su Lin Wong]

Weren'T scamming enough money.

[Gavesh]

They cannot scam.

[Su Lin Wong]

The three of them weren't able to scam. Yes. And so do you think they were killed?

[Gavesh]

Some of them telling us that their kidneys were sold because we have one Ethiopian there is still there. His one kidney lost already.

[Su Lin Wong]

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

[Gavesh]

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

[Jalil Muyeke]

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.

[Sarah]

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

[Rita]

In the fifth month we're all sold.

[Su 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.

[Rita]

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

[Su Lin Wong]

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

[Sarah]

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.

[Su 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.

[Jalil Muyeke]

So as time goes on they said to me I really need to add the numbers of customer 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.

[Su Lin Wong]

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

[Sarah]

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

[Su 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.

[Sarah]

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

[Su 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.

[Rita]

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

[Su Lin Wong]

Over their months in the compounds, Rita, Gavesh, Jaleel and Sam 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, soldiers. In a sense, they were as much a victim of all this as the scam targets abroad, like Shane Haines, the Kansas bank's 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.

[Sarah]

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

[Su Lin Wong]

And for the bosses, the scam compounds were a very different kind of place. It's incredibly debaucherous. Bright lights, luxury over the top, decadence.

[Rita]

It's that kind of hellhole.

[Su 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 Su Lin Wong. This is the economist.