Human trafficking for the purposes of populating cyber scam call centers is expanding beyond southeast Asia, where the crime was previously isolated.
Interpol revealed this week that an ongoing investigation has discovered evidence of abuse emanating from South America and also the Middle East.
Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar have typically been the hotspots of this type of crime since 2021 when it was first tracked by Interpol.
The latest five-month operation discovered that victims from Malaysia were being trafficked to work in Peruvian call centers and Ugandan victims were being trafficked to Dubai for the same reason, only to be diverted to Thailand and then Myanmar.
Police in Telangana, India, recently registered their first case of human trafficking for the purposes of cyber fraud.
An accountant was lured to southeast Asia to work for a cyber fraud operation before eventually being returned in exchange for a ransom payment.
Interpol said that in Myanmar alone, it identified trafficking victims originating from at least 22 different countries, although most come from the country's Kayin and Shan states.
Operation Storm Makers II has led to hundreds of arrests and the rescue of more than 140 individuals, although the scale of the threat is much larger; many of the 360 investigations remain open and ongoing.
Victims of human trafficking for cyber fraud are often lured to countries through fake job adverts but are instead forced to work in scam call centers, pushing cryptocurrency investments, as well as work-from-home, lottery, romance, and online gambling scams.
A report from Interpol from earlier this year said victims are also subjected to extortion via debt bondage, beatings, sexual exploitation, rape, and in some cases even organ harvesting.
The same report detailed the range of fake job ads that are often used to lure victims.
They range from low-skilled jobs promising light work and high salaries to roles like IT, digital marketing, and modeling.
It's also thought that the advent of consumer generative AI tools has allowed criminals to expand their pool of target victims beyond Chinese speakers, with easy-to-use translation software to create ads in additional languages.
Another factor driving the expansion of the crime was the COVID-19 pandemic, Interpol said, with digitized and remote work becoming more prevalent, while at the same time many also found themselves jobless and desperate for employment.
The latest operation, which carried out more than 270,000 inspections across 450 known trafficking and smuggling hotspots in just four days, also uncovered wider trafficking abuses with some victims barely in their teens.
One 13-year-old boy who was trafficked to India from Bangladesh was rescued following rapid action from the Interpol bureaus in each country.
Two Nepalese female victims, one aged just 17, were also rescued after they had been trafficked to New Delhi and trapped in prostitution.
Nearly 800 victims were intercepted after checks were carried out at border checkpoints alone, with hundreds more saved through other initiatives like coastline patrols.
This Cyber News was published on go.theregister.com. Publication date: Fri, 08 Dec 2023 15:43:04 +0000