Online Fraud Is Driven By Human Trafficking

Uploaded on 2023-12-18 in GOVERNMENT-Law Enforcement, FREE TO VIEW

The International Criminal Police Organisation, Interpol  has been monitoring the growing phenomenon of large-scale human trafficking. This is where victims are lured through fake job ads to online scam centres and forced to commit cyber-enabled financial crime on an industrial scale.

Now, Interpol has revealed its first operation targeting human-trafficking-fueled fraud, which shows that the criminal industry is going global, spreading beyond its origins in Southeast Asia, with new centres extending to the Middle East and to Latin America.

Interpol said law enforcement from over 20 countries carried out inspections at hundreds of trafficking and smuggling hotspots in October, many of which were known to be used to traffic victims to commit online fraud on an industrial scale “while enduring abject physical abuse.” The coordinated operation led to hundreds of arrests, demonstrating the “expanding geographical footprint” of the crime. 

Individuals from across the globe are increasingly being lured by ads on social media and recruitment sites promising lucrative jobs. However, once they arrive in their destination country, often in Asia, they are forced to work for large-scale digital fraud schemes.

Interpol provided examples, including Malaysians lured to Peru by promises of highly paid work and Ugandan nationals taken to Dubai then Thailand and Myanmar, where they were confined under armed guard and taught to defraud banks. Assistant Director of Vulnerable Communities at Interpol Rosemary Nalubega said that while most cases are still in Southeast Asia, “this modus operandi is spreading, with victims sourced from other continents and new scam centres appearing as far afield as Latin America.” 

The phenomenon reportedly emerged in Southeast Asia, where hundreds of thousands of people have been trafficked by criminal gangs and forced to work in illegal online operations. These fast-growing fraud operation are now generating billions of US dollars in revenue. 

Reuters recently published an investigation about the increase of this crime and its financing, examining a case in which a crypto account registered in the name of a Chinese national in Thailand received millions of dollars from a crypto wallet that was most probably linked to fraud.

Interpol:      NBC:     I-HLS:      Reuters:     Dark Reading:    TVPWorld:     Infosecurity Magazine: 

Image: Hermes Rivera

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