The Guardian’s view on the online fraud industry: Authorities must not forget that perpetrators are often victims too | Editorial

A Last month, a Chinese court sentenced 11 people to death for their role in an illegal fraud empire along the border with Myanmar. But it will not put an end to a harmful, multi-billion-dollar industry that is destroying the lives of two groups of victims. The first are those who are cheated out of money, often by people posing as potential romantic or business partners in what are known as “pig slaughter” schemes. The second are those who are forced to deceive them and work in conditions that amount to modern slavery.

modern study, Fraud: Inside Southeast Asia’s Cybercrime ComplexesA book by Ivan Franceschini, Ling Li and Mark Poe paints a terrifying picture of the sector. The workers are smuggled into heavily guarded prison-like compounds, where they are routinely abused and tortured for failing to achieve targets, or blackmailed for ransom. Others accept jobs willingly, but find they cannot pay the exorbitant fees for food and housing. Their work requires them to be in contact with the outside world around the clock, but they are too afraid to ask for help because of the surveillance and violence they are exposed to.

Reports of people being forced to commit crimes in online fraud centers in Southeast Asia first emerged in 2018. Five years later, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights reported that 120,000 people They were forced to carry out online scams in Myanmar alone, as well as 100,000 others in Cambodia. Cambodian police brag about it 3,000 suspects were arrested from 19 countries this summer, in the largest crackdown yet.

But fraud centers have now been identified in Serbia, Peru, PakistanCentral Africa and more recently East Timor. An NGO worker told the scam authors that a common scenario might be “a Chinese criminal residing in Cambodia [using] A Filipino individual was trafficked for defrauding a US citizen by using credit cards from Dubai to launder money.

The smuggling of Chinese actor Wang Xing into Myanmar in January highlighted the brazenness of these criminals. But as tensions increased in China and other countries, the Global Initiative to Combat Transnational Organized Crime began warns The gangs target individuals from countries with limited diplomatic or consular resources, citing the more than 700 Ethiopian nationals rescued in Myanmar this year. Satellite internet and solar power have allowed operators to move into remote areas. Deepfake technology opens new avenues for fraud.

Corrupt officials, from local police to senior politicians, allow these companies to flourish. When victims are rescued, authorities often prosecute them as fraudsters or fine them for immigration crimes. Help may instead come from white hat hackers, local NGOs, or business people from the victim’s home country. Remarkably, even some targets of the scam put aside their anger and helped those charged with exploiting them after learning the full story.

Criminal gangs thrive on data mining and exploitation, operating across transnational borders to evade control. To combat it, governments must share intelligence and target networks, not isolated compounds. Cooperation requires civil society – yet China and others do not trust it. Technology companies must stop using their platforms for organized crime; WhatsApp recently Deleted 6.8 million accounts Linked to online fraud centers. But above all, the authorities must ensure that traumatized victims are not punished as perpetrators.

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