Indonesians waiting outside the Indonesian embassy in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, in January 2026, after being freed from scam centers (Photo by Magdalena Chodownik)
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Today marks World Day Against Trafficking in Persons, one of those days designated by the United Nations to draw attention to important (and often neglected) issues. This year, the theme is “Trapped Behind the Scam.”
“This is a growing area where we’re seeing more and more people being victimized,” says Amy Pope, the director general of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), one of the UN agencies behind World Day Against Trafficking in Persons. Despite the increasing numbers of people trafficked into scam operations, typically in Southeast Asia but increasingly moving further afield, there is still “a fundamental misunderstanding about the people who are working in these call centers,” Pope emphasizes. “Often when we’re talking about call centers and the frauds that are being committed through them, the focus is on the criminal outcomes,” rather than the needs of the people trafficked into the centers.
This year, Pope says, representatives of African governments have been expressing concern to her “that their educated English-speaking populations are being lured into these particular vulnerable situations.” One reason “why the crime is so effective is that the reach of it is so wide. Historically, persons from southern Africa, for example, have not been recruited to work in remote areas of Cambodia or Thailand or Laos, and so there’s just so little awareness of what this is that I think governments are just trying to catch up.”
One person who knows all too well what it is to be trapped behind the scam is RM, a former mechanical engineer from Kampala, Uganda, who spent a nightmarish three months in a shadowy compound starting in late 2024. He’d secured what he’d been told was a marketing job in Thailand. But after arriving in Bangkok, he’d instead been driven at gunpoint across the border into Myanmar.
There he was forced to start a brutal new life. Posing online as “Alicia,” a Singaporean entrepreneur, he was trained in the surprisingly easy art of making people fall in love with his persona from a distance. Once they were hooked, RM was made to wheedle money out of the lonely victims. If he didn’t, he would be fined, beaten or threatened with even worse treatment.
“We were just praying that one time we would leave the place,” RM says.
His story is sadly far from unique. People representing roughly 80 nationalities have been known to be trafficked into scam compounds like the one that eventually released RM in early 2025. One estimate is that 300,000 people have been trafficked into these crime factories in Southeast Asia.
International operations against scam compounds have accelerated in the past year. In November 2025, the U.S. government set up the Scam Center Strike Force, which, among other activities, has reported blocking scam-linked cryptocurrency worth over $832 million. The Chinese government has also pushed for more raids of scam compounds. In 2026, enforcement operations have led to what Amnesty International has described as a “mass exodus” from notorious compounds in Cambodia, though scam bosses have continued setting up shop in new locations.
Some corners of the private sector have also been stepping up, to some extent. The Department of Justice announced that over four days in May, companies including Meta and Google helped to stop scam-related social media and email activity on over 1.4 million accounts. Of course, more than four days of coordinated activity, reaching well over a million accounts, would be needed to make a dent in this lucrative, globe-spanning industry.
A new philanthropic effort has also entered the growing movement to counter transnational fraud. On July 28, the Aspen Institute and partners including the Asian Development Bank, Google and Craig Newmark Philanthropies announced the Anti-Scams Philanthropy Collaborative, an initiative designed to put philanthropic funds to the work of detecting and preventing fraud. According to the new group, over $50 million has been committed to the effort.
Though they’ve identified broad areas of work, it’s too early to know where the money will actually go. “We don’t have specific confirmed use cases,” acknowledges Matt Altomare, the senior director of cybersecurity programs at Aspen Digital. The group is seeking further partners as they plot their first moves.
As for the world’s most recognizable institution working on migration, IOM has been criticized for not doing enough to aid trafficking victims. Pope says that the organization simply doesn’t have the resources. IOM has reported an enormous funding gap of $3.4 billion for 2026. This followed a collapse in the U.S. contribution the previous year, though that alone doesn’t account for the full shortfall. Drastic U.S funding cuts have also affected the community groups and anti-trafficking organizations whose work included combatting trafficking-linked online fraud.
“This is a place where the funding cuts that have hit across the system are having a very real impact,” Pope says. “And even when funding is the most robust, given the scale and the impact of this particular scam [industry], the resources just have been insufficient.” With enough resources, she says, IOM would like to help affected people to access the healthcare and shelter they need after leaving scam centers; to support foreign nationals with the travel permissions and funds to go home, if they want to; to carry out much wider awareness campaigns; and to help boost the capacity of governments in countries where people are being recruited into the scam industry.
But while “the needs are quite significant, the resources are very, very small compared to what we’re seeing right now.” Like the emergency shelters having to triage cases, IOM is having to prioritize the most vulnerable: those with the most acute needs, or those who can’t turn to other organizations like NGOs or faith-based groups.
In a statement released today, human rights organizations including Freedom Collaborative called for more formal action on protecting victims of scam-linked trafficking. Civil society can’t do this alone, they say. “As this crime continues to spread and evolve, strengthening victim identification, protection, coordination, and long-term support must be at the center of the global response,” the statement urges.
Freedom Collaborative, IOM and partners have also launched a campaign called “What the job ad isn’t showing you.” The site contains tips for job-seekers on avoiding fraudulent offers, as well as contact information for agencies that might be able to help those already trafficked.
From a European perspective, the anti-trafficking NGO La Strada International stated today, “victims continue to be misidentified as offenders while traffickers remain hidden behind the crimes they orchestrate.”
Pope of IOM says that part of this year’s campaign is intended “to educate law enforcement so that they can see the signs of trafficking, and also that they can distinguish between persons who are being trafficked into the scam center versus those who are being who are willingly taking a job.”
This is both an ethical and a practical need. Pope explains, “If the victims are being treated as criminals, we’re less likely to be able to identify who is at the heart of it, how they were recruited, and less likely to be able for governments to take action against the perpetrators of the crime.”
However, the line between victim and perpetrator can be complex. And at the elite level, the complicity of certain officials in this highly profitable industry can be hard to pin down.
But what is clear is that many people are suffering at the hands of the transnational fraud industry, financially, psychologically and physically. The work of anti-trafficking groups highlights that protection needs start before people ever leave their country, and continue after they return home, if they’re lucky enough to do so.
In RM’s case, it hasn’t been easy to find a job back in Kampala, after receiving assistance from the NGO EverFree to return home. This is one of the factors that puts people at risk of being re-trafficked and re-trapped.
This article is part of a series on transnational romance fraud, from Cambodia to Uganda, and from Nigeria to the U.S.
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