What are the scam compounds of Southeast Asia, and why are workers forced to run scams?

Scam compounds are large fraudulent operations, usually involved in human trafficking and generally found in Southeast Asia, run by criminal gangs. Many of the people who write scam messages there are workers who were lured by a fake job offer and then held and forced to scam. In late 2023 the United Nations Human Rights Office estimated that at least 120,000 people in Myanmar and at least 100,000 in Cambodia were being held in online scam compounds.

The recruitment is where the story starts. Scam centers lure job-seekers with fake offers of high-paying, legitimate work in digital marketing, IT, customer support or cryptocurrency trading, advertised on social media, job sites or messaging apps. Reports say that trafficked workers' passports are then confiscated and that they are threatened if they do not perform well. In 2022 the Kenyan embassy in Thailand facilitated the rescue of 76 trafficking victims from Myanmar and Laos, who were prevented from leaving unless they paid 1.2 million Kenyan shillings.

The operations grew during the COVID-19 pandemic and were further aided by the civil war in Myanmar. Fraud factories are often operated by Chinese and Taiwanese criminal syndicates, and the gangs' traditional gambling revenue fell during the pandemic, so they turned increasingly to fraud. Responses have included sanctions and criminal charges against alleged ringleaders. In July 2026 the UN Office on Drugs and Crime estimated that scam offences across East Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand caused losses of between US$88.3 billion and US$114.1 billion during 2025.