Scam center

A scam center, fraud factory, fraud park, scam factory, scam compound, scam hub, scam park, fraud center, fraud compound, or fraud hub is a collection of large fraud organizations usually involved in human trafficking operations, generally found in Southeast Asia and usually operated by a criminal gang. Scam center operators lure foreign nationals to scam hubs, where they are forced into modern slavery, to scam internet users around the world into fraudulently buying cryptocurrencies, running scam-through-romance frauds (pig butchering scam), Digital arrest scam (most common in India), or withdrawing cash via social media and online dating apps. A typical scam is known as "pig butchering". Trafficked victims' passports are confiscated, and they are threatened with organ harvesting and forced prostitution if they do not successfully scam sufficiently. Scam center operations proliferated in Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos and other countries during the COVID-19 pandemic and were further aided by the civil war in Myanmar.

The term fraud factory first appeared in a 2022 Sydney Morning Herald article about the Southeast Asian scams and human trafficking industry and was coined by Jan Santiago of the Global Anti-Scam Organization (GASO), a victims advocacy group, in describing scamming operations in the region.

The term was used by Kenya's Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the activity of trafficking victims to Asia where they use digital media to meet westerners and sell them cryptocurrencies. In Chinese, the term "fraud industrial park" (simplified Chinese: 诈骗园区; traditional Chinese: 詐騙園區; pinyin: zhàpiàn yuánqū; lit. 'fraud park zone'), sometimes shortened to 'park' (园区; 園區; yuánqū), has emerged in reference to these operations.^{[citation needed]}

Fraud factories are often operated by Chinese and Taiwanese criminal syndicates based in Southeast Asia. Those who willingly collude with the syndicates include Thai and Cambodian individuals. The gang's traditional revenue stream of gambling reduced during the COVID-19 pandemic and their activities increasingly focused on fraud factories thereafter to regain lost revenue.

Between August and late September 2022, the Kenyan embassy in Thailand facilitated the rescue of 76 trafficking victims. The victims were mostly Kenyan, and included Ugandans and a Burundian. The criminal gangs who operated the fraud factories had been targeting young and educated Africans. In November 2022, one Kenyan died after a botched organ harvesting operation associated with a fraud factory in Myanmar.

Myanmar is also an emerging destination for international labour trafficking, especially along its border areas. Victims in Myanmar include nationals from throughout Asia, including China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Thailand. Victims are lured by the false promise of high-paying jobs, and are trafficked through major cities like Yangon and Bangkok, and transit points like Mae Sot and Chiang Rai. They are then forced to work in "special economic zones" along Myanmar's borders, such as Shwe Kokko.

In late 2023, the United Nations Human Rights Office estimated that at least 120,000 people in Myanmar were trafficked there and are being held in online scam compounds. At least 100,000 people are being held in similar circumstances in Cambodia. Other operations were also being run in Laos, the Philippines and Thailand.

In May 2023, the Philippine Senate's Committee on Women, Children, Family Relations and Gender Equality conducted an inquiry into the proliferation of illegal activities involving foreign nationals, including human trafficking and racketeering, within scam hubs in various points of the archipelago. Senator Risa Hontiveros presented videos and reports of recent raids made by Philippine law enforcement agencies on a number of commercial and residential properties in Clark, Pampanga, that resulted in the rescue of 1,300 victims and the confiscation of over ₱180 million in cash. By August, the committee discovered that many of these scam hubs had been "hiring" more locals than foreign nationals.