1A WAMU NPR | Where do all those random scam texts and calls come from? They’re convincing. They’re everywhere. They’re working. But who is sending them?

It’s likely that someone is being forced to send the messages. They originate in elaborate scam compounds found mostly in Southeast Asia. The United Nations estimates that hundreds of thousands of people are kidnapped, trafficked, and forced to run financial scams across Cambodia, Myanmar, the Philippines, and Malaysia.

Run by transnational organized crime groups, the compounds look like call centers but are more like prisons. People are made to work long hours pushing online scams.

Scamming has become a profitable industry. Money moves across borders, armed groups compete for control, and hundreds of thousands of trafficked workers are trapped in scam compounds.

In 1A’s “Cyber Monday” series, Operation Shamrock’s Erin West and Click Here’s Dina Temple-Raston join Haili Blassingame to outline the emergence of these scam centers, the effect they’re having on forced workers and scam victims, and what’s being done to combat them.

Hear the podcast: Cyber Monday: The secrets of scam farms