'Pig-butchering': The online scam that's raked in $75 billion and counting

The 'pig-butchering scam.'

It's a criminal industry that targets the vulnerable, engages in human trafficking, and exploits weaknesses in digital currency.

How does it work?

Today, On Point: The online scam that's raked in $75 billion and counting.

Alvin Camba, assistant professor at the Joseph Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. Faculty affiliate at the Fletcher School at Tufts University.

Zeke Faux, investigative reporter for Bloomberg Businessweek. Author of "Number Go Up: Inside Crypto’s Wild Rise and Staggering Fall."

Neo Lu, former hostage in Myanmar scam operation.

Brian Bruce, chief of operations for Global Anti Scam Organization and former victim of online scam.

Part I

MEGHNA CHAKRABARTI: This is On Point. I’m Meghna Chakrabarti.

And a few weeks ago, our live broadcast got off to its normal start.

MEGHNA CHAKRABARTI [Tape]: This is On Point, I’m Meghna Chakrabarti. And we have arrived at episode four of our special series...

CHAKRABARTI: The show’s going well. Except for one thing. One of our main guests, professor Alvin Camba, was nowhere to be found. On Point director Eileen Imada was keeping me updated in my headphones. And unfortunately, there’s no recording of that; because you’d be impressed with her cool.

We’re moving forward. I’m introducing the guests…

CHAKRABARTI [Tape]: And today, we're taking a look at the promise of nickel, power and prosperity in Indonesia. (BIG BREATH)

CHAKRABARTI: That big breath there is the tiny gap where Eileen tell me, still no Alvin Camba, go to the other guest.

CHAKRABARTI [Tape]: I’d like to bring Cullen Hendrix into the conversation. He's senior fellow...

CHAKRABARTI: The show’s out of the gates. That’s what you hear. But what you don’t hear or see is the team in the control room.

They are scrambling to find Professor Camba, as the show rolls on.

CHAKRABARTI [Tape]: So Cullen, hang on here for just a second.

CHAKRABARTI: They call him half a dozen times. On every phone number we have for him. In the past, we’ve even called people’s neighbors, or office mates to help find them.

MARI PANGESTU: We are not destroying the environment in the process.

CHAKRABARTI [Tape]: That’s Mari Pangestu, she’s Indonesia’s former trade minister.

CHAKRABARTI: They send emails. Texts.

CHAKRABARTI [Tape]: Cullen, we’ve just got about 15 seconds left. 

CHAKRABARTI: They call every number we have for Professor Camba again. All the way to the end of the broadcast.

CHAKRABARTI [Tape]: We'll come back to the U.S. to see if we can meet those clean energy goals. This is On Point.

CHAKRABARTI: And then, the show’s over. Still no Professor Alvin Camba.

It’s live radio. Stuff like this happens. You’ve gotta roll with it. So when guests go missing, we’re not that concerned about the show. We get worried about the wellbeing of our guest.

Turns out, that concern was warranted. A couple of hours later, Professor Camba resurfaced. He sent a text to On Point Producer Daniel Ackerman. Professor Camba was okay, thankfully. But not entirely okay.

DANIEL ACKERMAN [Reading]: I was occupied for law enforcement reasons the whole of yesterday. I am being harassed online by some criminal organizations and it’s related to my other research on Chinese online gambling and scam compounds.

CHAKRABARTI: That’s Daniel, reading parts of the text.

ACKERMAN [Reading]: The harassment has been happening for months…Yesterday, I was with Domestic and International law enforcement agencies. The whole day was me coming in with my computer to the field office so they can get the data.

CHAKRABARTI: Scam compounds, Chinese organized crime, international law enforcement. Despite all that, Alvin Camba is able to join us today. He's assistant professor at the Joseph Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. Professor Camba, I am so very grateful that you're here with us today. Welcome.

ALVIN CAMBA: Oh, hi Meghna. How are you?

CHAKRABARTI: I'm well. So I understand that the harassment you have been experiencing from purportedly Chinese organized crime syndicates is the object of an ongoing international investigation.

It's likely that you can't go into a ton of detail. I appreciate that. But as much as you, can you tell us a little bit about when this harassment began, I understand one of the points that you look back on was a phone call or series of phone calls you had made with a close family member?

CAMBA: Yes.

CHAKRABARTI: How much can you tell us about that? Yeah, go ahead.

CAMBA: Okay. So just for a background, I've been like researching this topic since 2018 when any of these so-called companies were online gambling firms operating in the Philippines, and then eventually many of these companies, as many have transitioned into scam compounds since the pandemic.

And then in the Philippine context, I've been involved with testifying in the Philippine Senate a couple of times, and this involvement with the Philippine Senate and sort of other involvements with other agencies, with other organizations. Eventually led to a series of very suspicious incidences when it comes to like my personal life slash when it comes to, I know, like doing research.

So I think the earliest that this occurred was like in December when I was doing fieldwork in Indonesia. I couldn't access many of my schools, like what they call this, like websites, whether it's like. Whether it's like Concur or it's like, what they call the Watermark, like, website, the Watermark website is what we use for midterm evaluations.

And of course, I shrug it off. I'm like, okay, I'm in Indonesia. It happens, internet, et cetera. Eventually I realized that wasn't really the case. The most creepy, the creepiest like experience I've had was when in January I started to have conversations with my father, supposedly. Same phone number, same name, same voice, same, I would say, accent.

And then we started to talk about like my research on like scam compounds, online gambling, triads and it's pretty normal for my dad and I to have this phone call over like WhatsApp, because this is what we do all the time. He just recovered from like the hospital because he was having some sort of like heart issues.

And then we talk about research all the time because we never really had a close relationship about anything else. And maybe I shouldn't say that online, but that's actually true. We talk about research all the time, whether it's about critical resources, U.S.-China geopolitical relationship, cement and steel, climate change.

This time we spoke about my research, and we got into it quite a bit, including names of politicians in the Philippines, Malaysia and Cambodia being involved, the sort of like the data sets I was using. Fast forward, I don't know, four or five phone calls. A series of like 15-to-20-minute phone calls, fast forward three weeks, four weeks later.

My aunt called me and my aunt is my dad's spouse. Because my mom passed away when I was like 18. Then my aunt said, your dad's been worried. You haven't been able to like, talk to him. And then I was like, what do you mean? We've been talking quite a bit.

And then she was like, no, we've sent you emails, et cetera. We couldn't access his Philippine phone number. And then their telecommunications company did not know what was happening. And then, we just wanted to let you know that he lost his phone number.

And I'm like, what do you mean? Oh my God. I've been actually talking to somebody like him. He sounded like him. I even had this like very short video call with him and it looked like him. So yeah, that was like the creepiest thing that happened.

CHAKRABARTI: Professor Camba, can I just step in here very gently for a moment?

Forgive me. I literally have been whispering, Oh my God, as I'm hearing this story.

CAMBA: Yeah, it's fine.

CHAKRABARTI: So forgive me, but I just want to, for listeners who don't know some of this background, I promise you that when it comes to online gambling, scam compounds, cryptocurrency, and the changes after COVID. It all sums to this major international problem called pig-butchering, which we will talk about in detail in a little bit.

So folks have a little bit of background about where we're moving with this conversation. But I also just want to reiterate what you just said. So this is an area of research for you because of the activities that are going on in the Philippines and other places in Asia. You're doing research on this.

You think you're making, you thought you were making a series of calls to your dad. The voice on the other end, as you said, it's the right number, it sounds like him, has the right accent, you even had a video call, looked like him, but then your actual dad or your aunt says, your dad hasn't heard from you.

His phone number isn't working. So first of all, that's terrifying. Second of all, who were you talking to then?

CAMBA: I have no idea. They're like, supposedly, there are many examples where this actually happened to other people. There was a recent example in Hong Kong, there was this like, he works for a financial company.

Then he had a Zoom call with the board of the company. And then in the Zoom call, these people look like the board, they sounded like the board, and they acted like people in the board. And people in the board told him to transfer I don't know, $50 million, $100 million dollars. And then he was like, sure.

These are my bosses. It turns out it wasn't the board members. So there's people that have access to technologies where they can change their faces, they can change their accents. People have been making developments on many of the select frontiers.

CHAKRABARTI: So, in your case, whoever was in contact with you wanted to know more about your research and you had.

CAMBA: Yes.

CHAKRABARTI: And also, you where you had mentioned that you had been locked out of some of your university's websites when you were doing different, a whole different category of research in Indonesia. As far as we understand though, the reason why you had to miss our show that day a while ago was because the harassment.

Allegedly from these Chinese organized crime groups and how they're harassing you has even followed you on to U.S. soil. Is that correct, Professor Camba?

CAMBA: So they're mostly, all of the harassment is like online in nature. I've just, the reason why, the reason I missed the show, it was because I had to come in for a series of, I had to come in for a series of meetings and I had to bring my computers. Because they had to be scrubbed when it comes to like potential like malware. And potentially I'm not like illiterate when it comes to like computers.

I know a little bit of programming myself and I know how cryptocurrency works. I know how blockchain analysis works as well, but obviously more expertise is needed. And then they simply have to like, I have access to my computers when it comes to law enforcement, which I'm just going to keep it general. Simply because I can't really name this people slash organizations that I'm working with online.

Yeah, they're mostly online. It just affects like parts of my life. And there are like other forms of like smaller levels of harassment that actually has happened. Sorry, I'm going to, what was your question again?

CHAKRABARTI: Oh no. That's okay. You clarified that, you gave a perfect answer for that question.

Okay. But the point is that the harassment is significant enough that, as you said, now there's domestic and international law enforcement involved.

So Professor Camba, first of all, once again, very grateful that you could come back to the show today. We have to take a very quick break and when we come back, we're going to talk more about exactly what it is you're researching and get a deeper understanding of what this multi-billion, tens of billions of dollars in scamming that's called pig-butchering.

What it is, what it's all about, who's doing it, and who's being terribly exploited in the process. All of that when we come back. This is On Point.

Part II

CHAKRABARTI: Today we're talking about pig-butchering. It is a multi-billion-dollar series of online scams that generates tens of billions of dollars for groups like Chinese organized crime. It involves cryptocurrency, it involves unwitting long-term victims around the world, and it involves human trafficking as well.

I'm joined today by Alvin Camba. He's an assistant professor at the Joseph Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. And these online scams are one area of research for him. He's also recently become the victim of harassment by these groups for his research. I want to turn now also to Zeke Faux.

He's an investigative reporter at Bloomberg Businessweek and author of "Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall." Zeke, welcome back to the program.

ZEKE FAUX: Thanks, Meghna.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay wanna learn from you how it works. I'm just a regular person. I am a, just regular person, but in the United States. What's the first point of contact for some of these online scammers to, Meghna Smith.

Meghna Chakrabarti. Whatever, go ahead.

FAUX: These pig-butchering scams start with a wrong number text message. They're the kind of messages that we all get that say, "Hey Bill, did you pick up the dog food on your way home?" And they're looking for someone to respond, and if you do, they'll apologize for the wrong number, but then try to befriend you.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, so I have received these wrong number text messages, and fortunately, because I just hate being contacted by people I don't know, I delete them. So this is the first point that people should be aware of. If you receive a wrong number text message, first of all, what should folks do? Nothing?

Delete them? What?

FAUX: Yeah, definitely just ignore them. And what they're going for is they want to make, establish this kind of relationship and become friendly with you. And they'll start to drop hints that they are well off and that the reason they're well off is that they have some sort of special ability to trade cryptocurrency, maybe a wealthy uncle who taught them a new technique. And it's like a long con.

It'll be days where they're just sending you texts saying, "Good morning." And they'll send you pictures that often show they're an attractive Asian person of the opposite sex. And they will eventually invite you to download a crypto app and to send them money via crypto. So they'll tell you, Hey. They'll even walk you, if you don't trade crypto, they'll walk you through signing up for an account at Coinbase or another mainstream crypto exchange.

And then they will ask you to send money to their special trading program. Where you're gonna get big gains and it's called pig-butchering because they will fatten you up by showing you in the app that you're making lots of money.

They'll even let you withdraw real money to show you that it's working. But the whole time they're sizing you up. And once they've gotten you to send as much as they think you're good for, they take it and disappear. And people will really send, I've talked with people who've sent hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Millions of dollars. It's amazing. They just troll the world with these spam texts, and eventually you find someone who's in a kind of desperate personal situation and really is willing to believe and send a lot of money.

CHAKRABARTI: So this really is a long con. It's a very deceitful form of relationship building that ends in completely bankrupting folks.

It's not just wrong number texts, right? There are, people are being contacted via other platforms, like dating websites.

FAUX: Dating apps, LinkedIn.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah. So we actually spoke with someone who was a victim of pig-butchering. This is Brian Bruce. It happened to him in 2021.

LinkedIn was the place where someone contacted him, a scammer. They pretended to be a former employee of his company and wanted to exchange business ideas. And here's what Brian thought.

BRIAN BRUCE: Yeah, sure. I mentor other people. I have no problem to share business ideas with you. And it was one of those, let's move over to WhatsApp and talk, it's just a little more comfortable there.

Okay. No problem.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. And then, Zeke, as you said, the relationship developed and it got to the point where, yeah, Bruce, Brian, excuse me, was sending money to something that seemed legitimate because his scammer even let him withdraw some of that money with positive returns, again, from a crypto platform.

So it seemed totally legitimate to Brian Bruce and, a good investment too.

BRUCE: That's where I started to invest a little bit more, a little bit more, and about $190,000 in, they blocked my withdrawal.

CHAKRABARTI: $190,000. That's how much he lost from this pig-butchering scam. Zeke, who is doing this?

FAUX: That is really the dark part of this story.

And as it turns out, the people who are sending these messages are often themselves victims of human trafficking. It sounds like a QAnon conspiracy theory, but it's true. In Cambodia and Myanmar, there are entire office buildings, entire office parks that are full of people who've been lured there with the promise of high paying jobs doing customer service work.

Once they show up, they're told that they can't leave, their passports are taken, and they're forced to run these scams, and beaten or tortured if they don't comply.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. So in just a minute, we're going to hear the story of someone who went through that. Professor Camba, we just really do have one quick minute here.

This human trafficking part, you said COVID was a major turning point in the development of these scams. Did COVID force the organized crime groups who were behind this to turn to human trafficking? Or did they have, because they couldn't find willing participants after COVID?

CAMBA: So it was a different model before.

So before COVID, they were using online gambling scams, and they were targeting Chinese gamblers back in China when COVID happened. Many of these organizations could no longer import Chinese workers slash the Chinese government made it difficult for like activities to happen within China.

So they basically changed their business model from importing Chinese workers to basically importing everybody else and targeting Chinese everybody else in the world. The other thing is that I would like to add this. I know we only have a minute here, is that there was a recent Interpol report that this groups and organizations are earning $3 trillion a year, literally $3 trillion.

That's so much money.

CHAKRABARTI: $3 trillion with a T from the scams. Okay.

CAMBA: And yeah, from all their activities coming together.

CHAKRABARTI: Ah, okay, all the activities coming together. And then, as you both said, in recent years, post COVID, a lot of that activity is being done by forced labor. People have essentially been enslaved to work at these scam compounds, as they're called.

We did speak with someone who was kidnapped and enslaved and sent to one of these compounds. A quick note, by the way, the second half of the story you're about to hear does include some descriptions of violence, so it may not be appropriate for everyone. But the story belongs to a man who goes by the pseudonym Neo Lu.

NEO LU: I have to conceal my identity until I reach to anywhere safe, somewhere in the first world.

CHAKRABARTI: Neo has escaped the scam compound. Now he's essentially on the run and in fear for his life because of the global reach of the gangs who kidnapped him.

LU: They have all my information, because they do possess my passport and they have a copy of my Chinese national ID.

CHAKRABARTI: Neo's story begins with a job offer. A businessman in Bangkok, Thailand, needed an English Chinese translator to help with his e-commerce business. Neo speaks those languages. And he was looking for a few months of work before moving to Canada to attend university there. At least, that was the plan.

Neo took the job. When he landed at the Bangkok airport, a driver picked him up to take him to his new employer's headquarters. After the long flight, Neo took a nap in the van. A couple of hours later, he woke up.

LU: I was looking around and I was talking to the recruiter. Where are we going? The recruiter replied to me, "Oh because the headquarter is not in Bangkok because of the rent and other expenses, utility are very expensive, therefore we put the headquarter somewhere else."

CHAKRABARTI: They stopped at a hotel for the night. The next day, a new driver arrived to pick up Neo and two other passengers, another Chinese man and a Kenyan woman. After several more hours, the driver stopped the van in a patch of forest. He told Neo and the others to get out. Along the side of the road, a man with short hair and a machete was waiting.

LU: And I was looking around to try to figure out what's going on here. How can I try to figure out this situation? And then this short haired dude saw my action. And he unsheathes his machete, and I just follow. Okay, I don't think I could outrun or outstretch them. I don't think so.

CHAKRABARTI: Neo and the other two passengers were forced to walk down a shrubby hillside toward a river.

It was the Moei River, which Neo knew formed the border between Thailand and Myanmar. As they approached the river, Neo struck up a conversation with the Kenyan woman.

LU: Where are you from? What are you doing here? Something like that. She literally just telling me they are human trafficker. Yeah, by hearing that I know I'm totally [expletive].

CHAKRABARTI: They crossed the river, entering Myanmar illegally. Neo and the others were put into another van.

LU: And in my head is like spinning. Okay, I can't [expletive] breathe. And it was, I don't know, another one hour or half an hour to the destination: Dongmei Camp.

CHAKRABARTI: Dongmei Camp. You can actually see the place where Neo was enslaved.

Go to Google Maps and search Dongmei Zone in Myanmar. That's D-O-N-G-M E I, Dongmei Zone. And in satellite view, you'll find a huge complex of red roofed buildings, completely out of place amid the surrounding farmland. Neo also has pictures of the compound. The tan and rust colored buildings look desolate.

There are no people to be seen, but someone is clearly inside. Several of the windows are purposefully covered with fabric. Neo lived in one of those buildings. He shared a cramped eight-person room. The place was surrounded by barbed wired fences and armed guards.

LU: First day, I was told by this some middle level guy, "Okay, this is scam compound.

You are here to scam someone else. Do not fancy any others. It's a way out, so as long as you're here, you do your job."

CHAKRABARTI: Initially, Neo's job was as a low-level scammer. He was given four different cell phones to send texts to strangers around the world. He actually thought the whole scheme was silly.

LU: It was like watching some kids playing their little game and okay, this is stupid, but I have to play along with them.

CHAKRABARTI: Play along until he could figure a way out. Thanks in part to his computer skills, Neo's captors soon moved him into a bookkeeping role. The promotion came with an upgrade in lodging. He moved into a new room with just one other roommate. But the real perk of becoming a bookkeeper is that he was able to learn more about exactly how the operation worked.

Neo kept his head down and worked diligently, gaining the trust of his captors. He even got them to agree that after six months of forced labor, they'd release him. But six months came and went. Neo was still trapped in the compound. So he approached his manager about it, who wasn't happy.

LU: He said, anyway, you are going to the little dark room.

You are going to the torture chamber.

CHAKRABARTI: Until this point, Neo had been luckier than other hostages. He'd avoided the severe physical abuse common at the compound.

LU: I was kicked, and I was slapped, and I was receiving this sleep deprivation. I was handcuffed. To the ground, and they will use a baton and a PVC tube to shock me and beat me.

Neo's abusers made video recordings while torturing him. The experience was agony, but in the back of his mind, Neo realized it could also be his way out. Because the scam bosses also made money by demanding ransoms for the people they hold hostage.

LU: They call the ransom compensation. I have to compensate the [expletive] cartel for my release.

CHAKRABARTI: The cartel sent the video of Neo's torture to his parents back in China. They demanded a $70,000 ransom. Neo hoped that the video being out in the world would help people understand what was really happening inside the scam compound.

LU: And I am more than happy they torture me and record me. They torture me because it is so [expletive] vital.

I could show this to the whole [expletive] world. They did it.

CHAKRABARTI: Neo's parents didn't pay the ransom. They couldn't afford it. Plus, there was no guarantee it would actually result in Neo's release. But they did share the video with a well-connected businessman in Southeast Asia. And that man reached out to a local armed force aligned with Myanmar's ruling military junta.

They sent soldiers to the Dongmei Zone and got Neo out. This is how he described his release to our producer, Daniel Ackerman.

ACKERMAN: What were you feeling when you were leaving the camp?

LU: Ah, of course relieved, and I am fully aware that the real battle just begun.

ACKERMAN: What do you mean by that?

LU: I had to do all those media work to [expletive] them up.

ACKERMAN: So that's why you're talking to me right now?

LU: Yes, I talk to anyone who are willing to talk to me.

CHAKRABARTI: The Dongmei zone in Myanmar, where Neo was held, is reportedly controlled by a man named Wan Kuok-koi. He's also known as Broken Tooth. The U.S. Treasury Department alleges that Broken Tooth sat on the Chinese president's People's Political Consultative Conference, an advisory board to the Chinese Communist Party.

They also allege that he was the leader of the 14K triad, one of the largest Chinese organized crime groups in the world, known for drug trafficking, illegal gambling, racketeering, and human trafficking. Due to those activities, in 2020, the Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Broken Tooth under the Global Magnitsky Act.

However, international sanctions, condemnation, and increasing media scrutiny haven't eliminated the human trafficking behind these online scams. An August 2023 UN report estimates that at least 120,000 people could be held hostage in Myanmar, another 100,000 in Cambodia, with even more across Laos, Thailand, and the Philippines.

And that's why Neo spoke with our producer Daniel for almost three hours.

LU: Do me a favor. If you are going to talk on the show about slavery, I would still caution you, it is not a so-called modern slavery. It is just a classic good old slavery happened centuries ago. If you dare to talk about leaving that factory.

You will get beaten up. You will get chained. You will get electrocuted. It's a slave trade. It is slavery.

CHAKRABARTI: That's Neo Lu. Again, a pseudonym because he is in fear for his life.

CHAKRABARTI: When we come back, we'll talk more about who's behind the pig-butchering scams, who's benefiting from it, and if anything can be done to stop the scams.

Part III

CHAKRABARTI: The exploitation that happens on both ends of these terrible scams, in terms of the people who are being held hostage, to make the initial contacts to victims, and then also the victims themselves. On that side of things, Erin West is a cybercrimes prosecutor at Santa Clara County, California's district attorney's office.

She's worked on these cases, and she describes how really, they're so successful because they prey on people's most basic longings, like just the desire to connect to others. So here she is speaking earlier this year at a meeting of the Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists.

ERIN WEST: We have a lot of lonely people and all of a sudden, they're finding themselves in a situation where they have someone who is really interested in them and is listening to them. And is asking them about their day, and is concerned about them and making sure that their life is good.

The unwillingness of wanting to believe that isn't true runs deep. And so we need to be kind and realize that our family members, our friends who have fallen victim to this are really experiencing a relationship that is meaningful to them.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. So once again, there are multiple victims here.

The people who have been enslaved to make the calls and of course the people who are robbed of their money. Now about the people who are receiving it, who are benefiting from these scams. At a Senate hearing just last month, Massachusetts Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren warned that crypto is making it more lucrative than ever to advance scams like pig-butchering.

ELIZABETH WARREN: Crypto is the way this stuff is financed, and it's helping rogue states, it's helping terrorists. It's helping criminal organizations fund their operations on a scale like we have never seen before.

CHAKRABARTI: Professor Camba, I want to start with this basic question about who is benefiting from this?

Because you had mentioned that the sum total of their activities, according to Interpol, is some $3 trillion. So where is that money going?

CAMBA: So it's really hard to map out the entirety of the people benefiting from the scams and these activities, but just to have some sort of like temp, some outline on this.

Many of this are historically embedded criminal organizations that have been around East-Southeast Asia for the longest time, the so-called triads. Now, the members of these organizations, that's like another question, we do have answers to them. So people have done research on the specific activities you mentioned in the show, we mentioned like one of them.

But the sort of like map of who they are precisely. That's a difficulty. And then the other difficult issue here would be many politicians in many host countries. When I got home, countries, host countries. Let's say the Philippines, Thailand, Myanmar and Laos, many of the political leaders are benefiting directly from these activities. And their involvement and then like their complicity slash their active contribution to like trafficking to keeping this company slash compound safe from law enforcement have, I've given this, people like this, politicians, a lot of money. And to me, these are the people benefiting, clearly.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah. So you anticipated the question I was going to ask. And so Zeke, I want to hear more from you on this because it does.

I don't want to say defy belief. Because it's happening, but it is astounding that places that we can even just see on Google Maps, that everybody knows are there. And there's been many stories coming out of it from folks who have survived enslavement. And yet they're still there. Nothing seems to be happening.

Tell me more about the complicity coming from the governments of Myanmar, Cambodia, etc.

FAUX: Yeah, I visited one compound in Cambodia at the top of a mountain called Bokor Mountain. And it's an office park of eight or ten buildings that likely could hold thousands of people. And apparently, Vietnamese people were trafficked there.

I spoke with a Vietnamese law enforcement, a Taiwanese law enforcement official who'd come there to rescue people. And what he said was that even though they had evidence of torture, of scamming going on in there, Cambodian law enforcement was willing to cooperate to the extent of helping get out specific people who had been making us think about it, but they made no effort to actually shut down the compound.

It's become, in Cambodia, it's become a national embarrassment, so there has been some effort to make it look like they're doing something about this problem. But there's still new reports, you know, every week of compound filling up here or complaints from victims in other cities.

CHAKRABARTI: Wow. And the resistance to shutting them down comes even as someone like Senator Warren is claiming that these trillions of dollars are going in, not just to the criminal organizations that have organized the scams and kidnap the people to execute the scams, but terrorist organizations, as well.

Zeke, I mean the money, that kind of money, it moves through darkness for sure. But where else do we know it's going?

FAUX: So what I think Senator Warren is talking about is why crypto is so good for these scammers and for other criminals like terrorists. Because someone like Brian, the victim you spoke to before, if they wanted to send money to a Chinese gang in Cambodia, their bank, if they asked their bank to do it, their bank would ask a lot of questions.

It'd be difficult to send a big transfer like that. But with crypto, the scammer has a 30, 40-character string of random letters and numbers. And when the victim sends their cryptocurrency to that address, it's moved instantly, and it's gone. There's no refunds. There's no recourse.

There's no clues for law enforcement. If they try to attract this later. And over in Southeast Asia, there are storefronts where you can walk in and you can transfer crypto to a cashier and they will hand you a stack of cash, of local currency, no questions asked. So what Warren's complaining about is that the cryptocurrency industry has created this really great way for criminals to move money around the world.

CHAKRABARTI: All the way to things like financing terrorism, I presume, that's because that's one of the conclusions that she draws there. Okay, so Professor Camba, I appreciated your brave honesty in saying, look, it's going to be extremely difficult to shut down these operations when some, in the governments and in the countries in which these scam compounds are located, are benefiting from them, okay?

So it sounds international pressure can only go so far. You, however, have been trying, you mentioned this at the top of the show, to raise awareness, for example, in places, the Philippines. Can you tell me just a little bit about that? And if you feel like you've been heard by Filipino officials?

CAMBA: So I've been researching this since 2018. And when many of the scams were gambling related, the Philippines was basically, I would say, like the hotbed for this, like Chinese online gambling scams. There were around like 500, 600,000 Chinese citizens that illegally, legally, quasi legally working in the Philippines and imagine Metro Manila, a city of 20 million people.

You add half a million Chinese there, that created, like, a lot of issues.

Eventually when the government changed from the Rodrigo Duterte government, which I described was really embedded slash involved in actively fostering these activities. When the government changed from Rodrigo Duterte to the current government under Bongbong Marcos, many Filipino politicians slash state bureaucrats have started to become more active in curbing many of this facility slash investments.

And then since then I have been involved with the Philippine Senate and we've actively been trying to ban online gambling, which today online, when we say online gambling, it's also, they're also like scam compounds. Because it's really impossible to verify what they're doing. Many of these companies, they pretend to be BPO business process, outsourcing investments that are legal, but once they're inside, you don't really know what's happening and regulatory capacity is really difficult.

In terms of trying to shut them, to shut down these facilities.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. Wow. Zeke, though, what about trying to go after the groups that are organizing the pig butchering scams? We've mentioned Chinese organized crime quite a bit. Has the Chinese government decided to do something more about this?

FAUX: Yes. In the last year or so, it seems like the Chinese law enforcement has gotten more active. And they've actually appeared to be cooperating with rebel groups in Myanmar, who have risen up and attacked some of the scam compounds which are located on the Chinese border, and some of these compounds have actually been taken over by rebels and the people inside have been freed.

Some of the top bosses have been deported to China where they're facing criminal charges. But this is a business that can operate anywhere. So the surviving gangsters have shifted to other parts of Myanmar that are still controlled by the ruling junta, with the bulk of the country. Or gone back to Cambodia, which I've been hearing is still hospitable for these scammers.

It seems like a very challenging game of whack-a-mole because I think you've been reporting that there may be scam compounds popping up in other places. Africa, Dubai.

FAUX: Yeah.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah.

FAUX: There've been reports of scam compounds, again, generally run by Chinese or Taiwanese people in Africa, in Namibia, in Peru, in Dubai.

And it seems like maybe awareness is growing in some countries of the risk of taking these kinds of jobs. So I spoke the other day to a man from Uganda, who was tricked into going to work at a compound in Laos. So it seems like they're looking further afield for workers. I guess it's just so profitable that you can, it's worth their while to recruit people who have to travel a long way.

CHAKRABARTI: How about Seattle, Washington?

FAUX: (LAUGHTER)

CHAKRABARTI: Laughter? Zeke?

FAUX: What about Seattle?

CHAKRABARTI: I'm asking you because wasn't there one in Seattle?

FAUX: Oh, I don't know.

CHAKRABARTI: Alvin, did you go to one in Seattle?

CAMBA: I heard about it, but I'm not, I haven't done research on this.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. Because I thought that there was one in Seattle where several thousand people were held, but it got raided and shut down in 2022, but then possibly reopened.

Am I completely wrong about that, Zeke?

FAUX: I don't think so. I feel like that would have been big news.

CHAKRABARTI: (LAUGHS) This is an odd moment because I'm looking at notes that came from you, Zeke. Am I wrong? Am I wrong? Just tell me if I'm wrong.

FAUX: I don't think Seattle.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay.

FAUX: Not in the U. S.

CHAKRABARTI: Not in the U.S.

CHAKRABARTI: Maybe I'm looking at, okay, maybe it's just a typo.

I'm so sorry about that. Do you know which one I might be talking about then? Because the notes here must be wrong.

FAUX: No, I'm not really, I'm not really sure.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. All right. Moving on from there, I will try and fix that up. The most important thing then is protecting people, not only from, obviously from the human trafficking part of this terrible scam, but also being a financial victim of it.

Zeke, what would you recommend that folks do?

FAUX: The hard thing is that the advice is pretty simple. Don't engage with strangers on the internet who claim they have great money making ideas. But the problem is that most people already know that and the scammer's success rate is already very low.

They're just sending out millions of messages, hoping that they'll find somebody who's desperate and willing to believe the story they're selling. Awareness helps, I hope. And if you do think that you are in the middle of being scammed like this, even if you've already sent your money, there is, it is sometimes possible to get cryptocurrency companies to cooperate and freeze the money and eventually return it to you.

But it's important to contact law enforcement right away and to find somebody who actually understands what's going on. Because a lot of victims' report having difficulty telling their story to the police. But if you find someone like Erin West, who we heard earlier, there are law enforcement's learning about this and there are some things they can do to help if you report it while it's going on or right afterwards.

CHAKRABARTI: Professor Camba, we started with you, and if I may, I'd like to end with you. Are you going to continue this research?

CAMBA: For sure. I've been discouraged from simply, because of safety, my family and some of my colleagues have told me at least to limit public engagement, but I will definitely continue this and I plan to write a book about this someday.

CHAKRABARTI: Alvin Camba, assistant professor at the Joseph Korbel School of International Studies at the University Of Denver. Thank you so very much for coming back to the show and for joining us. Thank you as well.

And by the way, Zeke, I have come, we've figured out my Seattle error. In our pre-interviews that we do with guests, which we did with you, in order to make visual notes out of them, we stick them through a transcription service, and for some reason, the transcription service took the word Cambodia and turned it into Seattle, Zeke.

So I am sorry. So very sorry.

FAUX: Thank you, so much artificial intelligence, for that one.