It is estimated that there are as many as 400 of these criminal enterprises in the Philippines alone, almost always operating clandestinely and illegally alongside licensed and legal online gaming operations.
The proliferation of online scam companies targeting victims around the world is a relatively new phenomenon that exploded in the 1970s. COVID-19 pandemic.
The Philippine Presidential Commission Against Organized Crime (PAOCC) has raided and shut down dozens of operations in recent years, working with the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) to explore ways to work with other countries to dismantle the scam farms in Southeast Asian countries including the Philippines, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar.
UN News/Daniel Dickinson
Fraud farms like this one north of the Philippine capital Manila can house hundreds of workers.
UN NewsDaniel Dickinson visited two of the locations that were robbed in the Philippine capital, Manila, and Bamban in the north. He spoke to two people: Susan, a Filipina, and Dylan* from Malaysia who were forced to commit the fraud. He also met Winston Casio from PAOCC.
Suzan: My half sister convinced me to leave home and travel to Myanmar where I was promised a marketing job in her company. It turned out to be a scam company and I was forced to work to pay off my sister’s debts because she had fled.
I created a fake persona, a wealthy young woman from Brooklyn, New York, who owned real estate and businesses. The managers gave me images from an Instagram account to create the persona and told me to contact divorced or single men in the US and ask them to wire money to me. This is what is called a “love scam.” In the photos, my character is always shopping. But I couldn’t even go outside. I was locked in the building.
We get scripts to use in text conversations, and when they told me to improvise, I used a grammar app to check my English. If the client wants to meet you on a video call, they have models to play the part. The models are also traded.
UNODC/Laura Gil
Susan was smuggled to a scam farm in Myanmar.
Dylan: Most people don’t choose to be there. You have to work up to 16 hours a day, especially because you have to contact clients in different time zones. The managers told me to make them invest in a fictitious oil deal in Dubai and then steal their money.
There are quotas on how much you have to scam. They set a goal for me of $100,000 a month, and when I didn’t reach that, I was defeated.
Winston Casio: We have rescued about 680 people from the Bamban scam, but we believe some managers fled after receiving a tip.
These are huge operations. People are not allowed to leave. They are held against their will and forced to commit fraud and swindle. Women are traded as sex slaves and the managers on one farm had what they called “the aquarium” where women were forcibly displayed and then chosen by the men to have sex.
UN News/Daniel Dickinson
Winston Casio stands in the former barbershop of a scam farm in Manila.
Each location is self-contained and everything is there. Of course there are dormitories and cafeterias, but also a barber shop, medical clinic, massage spa, gambling room and a VIP karaoke bar for senior managers, where they could drink, sing and socialize in private rooms.
A few meters further down the corridor we also found a torture chamber, with handcuffs and blood stains on the walls. This is where people were brought to be brutally punished if they did not meet their quota.
Suzan: I almost managed to scam some clients but felt bad about it so I warned them secretly while telling my manager that they had blocked me. He got angry and hit me with a metal pipe. My injuries were too serious to be treated at the scam farm so I was taken to a hospital by three guards but I couldn’t tell the doctors what really happened to me. I still suffer from the physical and emotional trauma.
UN News/Daniel Dickinson
A few meters away, in a corridor of a torture chamber, a VIP karaoke bar was located.
Dylan: I wasn’t earning a salary, but I started accumulating debts because I had to pay for food, which cost two to three times more on the scam farm than outside. I was released after a month when the facility was raided.
UNODC/Laura Gil
On a desk at a fraud factory raided by authorities are scripts an employee used to contact victims.
Winston Casio: Sometimes it is difficult to distinguish between victims and accomplices. There are cases where people are taken against their will, but after four to five days of training, they embrace the illegal activity and flourish and actually make money from it. The law wants to see this situation in black and white, but there are many gray areas.
To say that this situation is challenging is an understatement, as the transnational organized criminal networks that operate these facilities are always three or four steps ahead of us.
This is a regional problem that no country can solve. This is organized crime. Susan will confirm that the furniture and computer equipment are the same in facilities in Myanmar and the Philippines.
Law enforcement agencies across Southeast Asia need to work together and coordinate, and this is why UNODC is important. It can bring countries together and provide expertise, for example in digital forensics.
UN News/Daniel Dickinson
A workplace is abandoned after a raid on a scam farm in Manila.
Suzan: Towards the end I was beaten 13 times in one day. I prayed and prayed while they were beating me. I was forced to call my parents and ask them to pay $7,000 for my ransom, which was the cost of the hospital bill. They didn’t have the money and I told them not to try to pay it. I told my managers ‘just kill me.’
They don’t care about people. They only care about money. Eventually, they realized that I had no money and that I was useless to them, so they just let me go. I went back to the Philippines via Thailand.
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Susan now works for PAOCC in Manila and Dylan has agreed to testify in a possible lawsuit. He hopes to eventually return to his home in Malaysia.
*Not their real names