In an increasingly common crime, dotting the jungles of Cambodia and Myanmar are huge, sprawling compounds, home to massive self-contained scam centers. And those scam centers are often staffed by people who have been trafficked and forced to work. Hundreds of thousands of them in fact. Now AI is literally changing the face of who is being trafficked into the compounds. Due to the improved technology, experts say increasingly traffickers are targeting women to fill the roles.
When dying feels like the only way out
Lily is a single mother who left home in the Philippines when she was offered a high paying job in Taiwan. Her sister Rose has been taking care of her son while she’s away. But instead of a good job, Lily found herself held captive, tortured and worse. Once behind compound walls in Cambodia, Lily was then forced to lure victims into online romance scams.
In one of the few messages home Lily has been able to send Rose shared with CNN:
She said she wants to die there and I told her ‘Please don’t do that…your son is always asking me when you will come home’.
Lily’s experience mirrors a new trend in the criminal trafficking enterprise of specifically targeting women with their fake job offer trafficking trap. That’s because scammers want women’s faces and voices to use in their lucrative romance scams. Using AI altered faces and voices, traffickers force them to engage in online romance schemes with men in wealthy countries to scam them out of money.
Victims’ choice- scam or be a sex slave
Like Lily, many of the trafficked women come from the Philippines. With inequality and low wages, the poverty rate is relatively high. And stable, good-paying jobs are scarce, especially for women. That’s why many look overseas for a job to help pay for their children’s education, buy a home, or help take care of their aging parents.
But that dream turns to ash when many women instead find themselves in horrifying conditions inside the scam compounds. Forced to con victims in romance scams, investment schemes and more.
Sara, another women from the Philippines who was trafficked but eventually managed to escape, said:
“You basically become an actor, you have to memorize your scripts, you haven’t slept, you’ve been tortured, and you have to remember these scripts. The worst part (was) you had to be sexual with them. You had to sext them,”
Horrendously, if they refuse to scam, the women are often forced into sex work, serving the men inside scam compounds. According to Sara, women are essential to the scam operations. But they are also the easiest to control through the constant threat of sex slavery. Whenever she balked at an ask, Sara said the traffickers asked her, ‘Do you want to go be a sex slave?’. Sara stated, “They know that’s our greatest fear.”
In debt, traumatized and starting from square one
Another Pilipino female survivor, Casie, was rescued and returned home recently. But her homecoming is bittersweet. Like many women lucky enough to make it back home, her family accrued huge debts while she was trapped in Cambodia. She is still desperately working out how to pay them back, increasing her vulnerability of being re-trafficked.
Casie said:
After that tragedy, after human trafficking happened, I really don’t know how to start again,
Whether it’s due to new technology like AI; lax to nonexistent law enforcement; or outright complicity by government leaders; hundreds of thousands of women and men have already fallen victim to cyber-slavery. If governments everywhere, and especially in known hotbeds like Philippines, Myanmar and Cambodia, don’t do more to crack down, hundreds of thousands more will fall victim.
Freedom United is interested in hearing from our community and welcomes relevant, informed comments, advice, and insights that advance the conversation around our campaigns and advocacy. We value inclusivity and respect within our community. To be approved, your comments should be civil.