Tricked, tortured, finally freed: Inside a Burmese scam farm
The Times | Trafficked by a Chinese crime gang, Mustapha Momoh was forced to work in a compound in Myanmar — one of 375,000 similar people toiling in southeast Asia to con westerners out of their life savings. He shares how he escaped.
We hear about scams and the huge compounds built to essentially run the industry of conning people out of their savings. From how he got there to how he eventually got out, this article shares a frightening picture of the experience of the human trafficking victims forced to run the actual scams.
Interviewed for the article, Operation Shamrock’s Erin West shares her perspective about the scam industry:
Despite mounting public awareness and outrage, the global machinery behind the scam syndicates grinds on, largely untouched. Putting a stop to them would mean arresting those at the very top of the crime gangs, says Erin West, a former US prosecutor and founder of the anti-scam group Operation Shamrock.