The job ad promises a customer-service or IT role abroad, good pay, flights covered. The recruit arrives to find a guarded compound, a confiscated passport and a quota: defraud strangers online through fake romances and crypto “investments,” or face beatings, debt and resale. This is trafficking for forced criminality, and in 2026 it moved to the center of the global anti-trafficking agenda.
The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) built its 2026 World Day Against Trafficking in Persons campaign around the theme “Trapped behind the scam.” The choice reflects a structural shift: a crime long associated with brothels, farms and factories now runs on laptops, SIM banks and money-laundering networks — and its victims are coerced into victimizing others.
What happens inside
In February 2026 the UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR) published survivor testimony from people trafficked into scam operations in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, the Philippines and the United Arab Emirates between 2021 and 2025. The report documents torture, sexual abuse, forced abortions, food deprivation and solitary confinement, with failed escape attempts punished severely. Survivors also described border officials helping recruiters and police threatening or extorting them.
IOM reports that recruitment is global and runs largely through social media, which is why victims now come from more than 80 countries. Its caseload skews toward Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka, Ethiopia, Kenya and Bangladesh. A September 2026 UNODC study found the pattern has reached Bangladesh, Bhutan, the Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka — including migrant workers already employed in the Gulf who were lured onward by higher-paying offers.
A criminal economy organized like a franchise
UNODC’s July 2026 regional assessment describes syndicates that no longer specialize. The same networks run cyber-enabled fraud, human trafficking, migrant smuggling, drug trafficking, illegal gambling and money laundering over shared financial and operational infrastructure. UNODC’s regional representative likened the operating model to corporate franchising. The report also documents criminal use of generative AI, deepfakes and automated fraud tooling.
The economics explain the persistence. Losses of roughly $88–114 billion in a single year across one region dwarf the budgets devoted to fighting trafficking. Trafficked labor is the cheapest input in that business, and compounds are increasingly hidden in ordinary-looking hotels, rented flats, villas and even registered IT companies.
2026: the year of the crackdown
- January: Cambodia arrested Prince Group chairman Chen Zhi and extradited him to China, followed by a visible wave of raids. One monitoring group counted interventions at roughly 190 suspected sites in early 2026.
- Myanmar border: Joint operations by Myanmar, China and Thailand demolished the notorious KK Park complex in Myawaddy. Thailand cut electricity, internet and fuel supplies to border areas hosting compounds.
- China: Authorities executed key members of the Bai and Ming crime families tied to Kokang-based scam hubs.
- United States: The 2025 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report, released in late September 2025, kept Cambodia on Tier 3 for a fourth year and for the first time labeled it a “state sponsor” of trafficking, alleging official complicity. Twelve other governments, including Myanmar and China, received the same designation. Laos was downgraded to Tier 3. A federal Scam Center Strike Force was also stood up.
- August: Cambodia’s minister responsible for counter-scam efforts told foreign diplomats that no scam compounds remained in the country.
Displacement, not eradication
Independent observers are skeptical of victory claims. In June 2026 Amnesty International reported that dozens of suspected compounds in Cambodia were still operating despite months of enforcement; the government rejected the findings. A Harvard-affiliated transnational-crime analyst told Reuters that international pressure had genuinely disrupted the large compounds that formed the visible front end of the industry — the implication being that the less visible back end remains.
Myanmar Witness found that after late-2025 enforcement, operations shifted toward Cambodia and rural Myanmar. The broader pattern is dispersal: smaller sites, more locations, more jurisdictions. INTERPOL had already documented victims from 66 countries by March 2025; IOM’s 2026 figure is above 80.
The victim-identification gap
The most consequential failure is not enforcement but identification. Amnesty criticised Cambodian authorities for processing people leaving compounds as irregular migrants rather than trafficking victims. Humanity Research Consultancy found no evidence that the tens of thousands of people released or displaced by the crackdowns were being properly screened or supported.
OHCHR and IOM both argue that anti-trafficking laws must explicitly recognize forced criminality and guarantee the non-punishment principle: people coerced into committing fraud are victims and should not be prosecuted or deported for crimes they were forced to commit. Without that, raids risk punishing the trafficked and leaving the organizers untouched.
What to watch
- Independent verification of Cambodia’s claim that no compounds remain.
- Tier and “state sponsor” decisions for Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos and the Philippines in the next U.S. TIP Report.
- Relocation of operations into South Asia, the Gulf and Africa, and into smaller, residential-scale sites.
- Follow-the-money enforcement: sanctions, crypto off-ramps and payment processors that serve scam networks.
- Whether governments build screening protocols so released workers are treated as potential victims, not detainees.