Scam Centers Expand Global Footprint with Trafficked Victims – Source: www.infosecurity-magazine.com

Online scam compounds are no longer only found in Southeast Asia, with centers and victims increasingly likely to originate from elsewhere in the world, according to Interpol.

The policing group analyzed Interpol Notices issued in the past five years to reveal new crime trend data yesterday.

It said that although three-quarters (74%) of trafficked victims were brought to the original “hub” for scams in Southeast Asia, that still leaves a quarter who were not. While around 90% of human trafficking “facilitators” were Asian, 11% came from Africa or South America.

In fact, Interpol warned that West Africa may be emerging as a new regional hub for digital crimes, alongside Central America and the Middle East. Last year, for example, police dismantled a scam center in Namibia, where 88 young people were forced to conduct scams.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, 80% of global facilitators were men, and 61% were aged between 20 and 39-years-old.

Read more on scam centers: Meta Shutters Two Million Scam Accounts in Two-Year Crackdown

Over the past five years, victims have been tricked into flying from 66 countries, with no continent spared. After arriving at their destination, they are trafficked into online scam centers.

Interpol estimated that hundreds of thousands have been detained in this way. They’re usually lured via false job adverts, before being detained in compounds and forced to carry out social engineering scams like romance baiting (aka pig butchering).

Although some are there of their own volition, human trafficking victims are often subjected to debt bondage, beatings, sexual exploitation, torture and rape, it added.

Interpol said AI is becoming more popular as a tool to create convincing job ads to lure victims and to generate online profiles subsequently used for sextortion, romance fraud and other scams.

It’s also likely that those behind these compounds are diversifying into other crime types, such as trafficking endangered species, the report claimed.

Interpol’s acting executive director of police services, Cyril Gout, described the reach of today’s online scam centres as a “dynamic and persistent global challenge.”

“Tackling this rapidly globalizing threat requires a coordinated international response. We must increase the exchange of information between law enforcement in the growing number of countries affected and strengthen partnerships with NGOs that help victims, and technology companies whose platforms are being exploited,” Gout added.

Earlier this year, the UN warned that scam centers made $37bn in 2023 and are spreading “like a cancer.”