The Complexity of Compelled Crime in Southeast Asia’s Scam Complexes – The Diplomat

According to recent estimates, the cyber fraud industry operating out of the Mekong sub-region now boasts a workforce of more than 350,000 people. Who exactly are these people and what should be done about them?

The early days of The “scamdemic” of Southeast Asia‘ were dominated by horrific reports of abuse from anti-trafficking advocates and media reports. It is fair to say that the issue initially gained global notoriety largely due to these shocking stories, which were often supported by disturbing visual evidence.

As the world begins to better understand the industry, it is now abundantly clear that these are not isolated cases. The scam industry follows an established pattern of rampant abuse, which defines the bottom of the pyramid in a wide range of criminal industries.

“Forced crime” is the technical term used to describe such cases and according to that of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). most recent GLOTIP report15 percent of all detected cases of human trafficking worldwide involve human trafficking for forced criminal purposes. Notably, this report is based on data that predates the explosion of the coercive fraud phenomenon in Southeast Asia.

Compulsory and Marginalized Labor is a Defining Characteristic of Scams”composite capitalism‘as well as the economies of drug growing and smuggling, wildlife trafficking rackets, illegal mining and a host of other predatory and illegal industries.

Yet a growing number of actors are now making public claims that undermine the evidence of widespread abuse within scam complexes. As we evaluate these claims, it is important to consider the conflicting (often perverse) incentives guiding these actors, as well as the glaring capacity and knowledge gaps that potential responders face today.

Perhaps the most outspoken and adamant voice against the testimonies of victims of human trafficking is and remains the Cambodian government. For example, Cambodia’s National Committee to Combat Trafficking in Persons (NCCT) has stated this more than 90 percent of all claims from coercion fraud victims are false. NCCT spokespersons and other government mouthpieces regularly denounce victims’ testimonies and vilify the victims themselves as “liars,” “attention seekers” and the like. Such ad hominem attacks extend beyond the victims basically anyone reporting on this issueand try to paint the story as something of a global conspiracy to undermine Cambodian tourism and/or delegitimize the Cambodian government.

The best explanation for this bizarrely defensive posture is the established reality of the heavy involvement of the Cambodian ruling party elite in this criminal industry, an industry that is likely responsible for more than half of the country’s GDP. Considering the nature of the Cambodian political-economic arrangementformal state positions reliably follow the interests of the scions of the ruling parties. In this light, claims that serve to obscure the nature of a ‘too big to fail’ industry and ensure its continued existence in Cambodia should be seen as overtly disinformation and designed to directly encourage crime.

A second primary source of underreporting of victims is the Chinese government. At the time of writing, at least 60,000 people have been removed from regional scam complexes and forcibly returned to China. Of these, there are only a few isolated cases where the individuals were transparently and formally classified as victims by the Chinese government. This reality arises from a model of law enforcement involvement that, as suggested in a recent report of the Global Initiative to Combat Organized Crime, tends to project strength and abandon the place of elite perpetrators who could later serve the party’s interests. Centering widespread claims of victimhood would have the potential to undermine both goals, problematizing the image of Chinese law enforcement’s success and highlighting the role of complicit local elite actors in perpetuating crimes against Chinese nationals (e.g., legally contentious Chen Zhi of Prince Group Holding in Cambodia).

In addition to the Cambodian and Chinese governments, statements from other regional governments increasingly obscure the existence of victims in the complexes. A preference for underreporting among these stakeholders can be explained by several key factors.

First, given the size of the fraudster workforce from some of the major source countries, states may be reluctant to take on the burden of potentially large numbers of victims entitled to government assistance. Calling them criminals eases this burden. Beyond pragmatic calculations, there are also significant, often profound capacity gaps in formal victim identification processes across the region, which are crippling well-intentioned efforts to respond. Finally, specifically in Cambodia, there is a perverse incentive for embassies to confirm the Cambodian government’s propaganda about victims in order to secure the cooperation of the complicit state apparatus. An anonymous source at a regional embassy in Phnom Penh confirmed that challenging Cambodian government-designated victim classifications consistently resulted in the regime stonewalling rescue requests for their nationals.

Outside the region, the recidivism rates of people removed from complexes are also increasingly used to argue against the desirability of giving them the status of victims. For example, a U.S. law enforcement official speaking at a conference in Australia in November claimed that eight in 10 people who leave the complexes choose to return to them after their release.

However, according to local civil society active both on the Thailand-Myanmar border and in Cambodia, such claims do not reflect the reality on the ground. Although NGOs acknowledged the existence of recidivism in both contexts, they suggested that the 80 percent claims were dramatically exaggerated.

Mina Chiang, founder and CEO of Research advice for humanitywhich has been working extensively on the issue over the past three years, added further context to the recidivism discussion, saying that many of the people in these complexes are “extremely vulnerable in the context of their home country.” She suggested that they often lack supportive family systems and have few criminal records that undermine their economic opportunities and limit their freedom of choice.

This reality is not unique to coercion scammers and is observable in many forms of coercion crime. Furthermore, re-victimization of human trafficking and modern slavery situations is quite common across industries and regions, and does not in itself undermine the case for abusive practices.

While the barriers to effective and honest victim reporting are enormous, it should also be noted that not all people who work in these complexes are victims. This is a thriving and highly profitable criminal industry and there are certainly willing actors within the walls of the compound.

Given the specific complexity of identifying victims in these buildings, the UNODC has drawn up a list of “Key Indicators of Human Trafficking for Forced Crime to Commit Cybercrime.” This useful document sets out the principles necessary to undertake a meaningful capacity building effort, and several key NGOs in the space are beginning to engage in such work. These responders face significant challenges – both those common to traditional capacity building campaigns and the specific incentive misalignments noted above that are somewhat unique to this space.

As elsewhere in the anti-trafficking world, the majority of formal responders have taken a credible approach to their work in identifying and caring for victims. Well-intentioned actors in the space must remain cautious about allowing nuance in their advocacy and strive to continually improve their victim identification work. To do otherwise is a disservice to victims and the broader movement, and helps those who, for various reasons, push the idea that victim claims are just a form of scam.

The debate over the size of fraud victims is now raging and will have serious implications for how and how well the world responds to this crisis. The lack of systematic data on the sector hinders our ability to speak with absolute authority on both sides of that debate. This data gap creates an over-reliance on anecdotal evidence, creating space for it malicious actors to influence the narrative through repression and disinformation. Yet we can counter that trend by recognizing the clear existence of a pattern that spans eras, industries, and regions: large, marginalized populations are becoming always embroiled in the lower layers of major criminal enterprises.

The fraught history of more than 50 years of the “war on drugs” is emblematic of the need for a rights-respecting response to the criminal epidemic of cyber fraud that the world faces today. Militarized approaches to criminal industries ossify criminal economies at national and regional levels and ignore the impact on workers with limited agency, who form the bottom of the criminal pyramid. It is common knowledge that it is these vulnerable workers – trafficked, abused, or otherwise marginal – who typically bear the brunt of scorched earth law enforcement. This has been the case in the global response to illicit drug cultivation and trafficking, and it is not difficult to see a similar pattern emerging in our approach to organized cybercrime.

As we develop a more comprehensive approach to “the most powerful criminal network of modern times”, it is certainly appropriate that anti-trafficking activists share the wheel with law enforcement authorities. Yet it is equally important that we do not discard the lessons we have learned about the nature of the industry and the people who make it up. We owe this understanding largely to the work of a small number oppressed independent journalists, Cash-strapped NGOsAnd courageous survivors willing to share their stories. Accordingly, and regardless of the precise size, recognizing the significant presence of vulnerable people in these complexes is paramount as the global law enforcement response gathers pace.