It all started with word of mouth. At the start of 2022, Bridget Motari is bored at a hospitality school in the town of Eldoret, in western Kenya. This 22-year-old student dreams of salaries more generous than those her country can offer her. An acquaintance informed him of a recruitment campaign for customer service jobs in Thailand paying the equivalent of more than 900 euros per month. She jumped at the opportunity, even though the recruitment agency did not “inspire confidence” in her. “It was the worst decision of my life,” sighs the survivor, whom Le Monde met in May in Nairobi. Read also | Article reserved for our subscribers In Southeast Asia, a thriving online scam business with global impact Add to your selections When he arrives in Bangkok, in July 2022, there will be no job or salary . Trapped by a Chinese mafia, she sees her destiny change. The journey to hell will last four months, during which the young woman will be forcibly transferred to Van Pak Len, in Laos, in the province of Bokeo, within the special economic zone of the Golden Triangle. She is sequestered and exploited there, in one of the vast centers of online scams which abound in this hotspot of global cybercrime. Many Africans find themselves trapped and serving as little hands in these Southeast Asian cities devoted to cyber fraud. According to estimates from the United States Institute of Peace, an American think tank, the number of captives of these Chinese cartels who have taken up residence in a vast area between Burma, Laos and Cambodia would reach 305,000 people, mostly Asians. A former platform for opium trafficking, this territory has transformed into a mecca for online extortion during the Covid-19 pandemic. Criminal groups linked to Chinese triads thrive in this area made almost inaccessible by the civil war in Burma and the complicity of local elites. A screenshot of a Motion Array video. MOTION ARRAY Among them, we find a figure of Chinese organized crime, Wan Kuok-koi, historic leader of the Triad 14 of Macau, also known by his nom de guerre “Broken Tooth”. Another big name in cyber fraud, Cambodian tycoon Ly Yong Phat, who was special economic advisor to former Prime Minister Hun Sen, has been under American sanctions since September for “human rights violations linked to the treatment of workers subjected to forced labor in online investment fraud operations.” Seducing men online This thriving industry has a name: pig butchering, which involves “fattening” victims online before extracting funds from them through cryptocurrency sites. The activity has brought in around $75 billion since 2020 (or around €69 billion), according to a study from the University of Texas published in March and entitled “How do cryptocurrencies finance slavery? The economics of pork butchering.” You have 73.68% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
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