Photo – AFP
The promise of a swanky life from IT jobs abroad has lured many youngsters from India into fraudulent schemes involving cybercrime and human trafficking. The scammers advertise on social media, promising high-paying IT jobs in Southeast Asian countries, including Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos, and eventually force victims into illegal online scams once they arrive to join the service1.
Take the case of graphic designer Stephen Wesley. Back in 2022, he was offered a lucrative, high-salary data entry operator job. Eyes filled with hope and a heart with dreams, Wesley landed in Thailand via Sharjah. But soon after arriving in Bangkok, that dream turned into a nightmare as Wesley and six others from Southern India were taken to Mae Sot city, from where they were trafficked to Myanmar. His data entry job turned into hacking as he was tasked with creating fake social media profiles, targeting wealthy people, and making them lose heavily.
“We were trained intensely on how to carry out scams. People who lose money to hackers do not even know they are being duped. Life inside those large compounds was hell. All we saw were gun-wielding personnel speaking Mandarin,” Wesley recounted those horrors after being rescued in October 2022.
A parliamentary committee wants the central government to criminalize illegal recruitment practices as a deterrence because cyber fraud has become an epidemic in India.
He providentially escaped the compound in Myanmar with the local police’s help, but spent 45 days in a Thai prison for failing to show a valid travel document and work permit. In April this year, the Indian government revealed in parliament that 2,907 Indians have been rescued from criminal operations in Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar, where they were forced to conduct cybercrimes and other fraudulent activities after being entrapped by fraud job recruitment agencies2. Though the exact number could not be ascertained, thousands more are believed to be trapped in such camps run by organised rackets.
Alarmingly, the youth bulge makes India a flourishing recruiting point for the international scam rackets. This entire process of enticing gullible youngsters hinges upon illegal agents operating in multiple layers. At least a dozen people handle one recruit from their home centre to the final destination for bypass police surveillance. Despite cracking down on intermediaries from time to time, this veiled trafficking could not be stopped. Three years after Wesley’s frightful experience, Indians are still being ensnared in Southeast Asia’s shadowy cyber scam compounds. Between October 22 and 25, at least 399 Indians were among more than 1,000 people who fled from Myanmar into Thailand after a military raid in the notorious KK Park scam complex3.
A parliamentary committee wants the central government to criminalize illegal recruitment practices as a deterrence because cyber fraud has become an epidemic in India4. As per information submitted to the parliament by the Indian Home Ministry (MHA), citizens lost a whopping 228.45 billion rupees (approximately 2.57 billion USD) to cybercriminals in 2024 alone, a 206 percent surge from the 74.65 billion rupees (approximately 0.841 billion USD) in losses reported in 20235. The MHA also estimates, over half of the 70 billion rupees (approximately 0.789 billion USD) lost to cyber scams from January to May this year originated from networks based in Myanmar, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand. Ironically, illegally recruited Indian youths are behind such cyber frauds, causing India’s monthly loss of 14 billion rupees (approximately 0.157 billion USD)6. The U.S. says ordinary Americans lost 10 billion USD to cyber scammers last year7, while the UN warns, “the situation has reached the level of a humanitarian and human rights crisis8.”
After visiting a scam farm in the Philippines that was raided in March 2024, UN agency to combat drugs and crime’s (UNODC) now acting representative Benedikt Hofmann had categorically asserted that “Southeast Asia is the ground zero for the global scamming industry,” as transnational organised criminal groups based in this region are masterminding such operations and profiting from them9. Also, the UNODC issued an official warning in September that East Timor has become the latest hotspot for scam centre operations plaguing Southeast Asia and beyond, with transnational organised crime networks infiltrating the Special Administrative Region of Oecusse Ambeno through foreign investment schemes10.
In a first-of-its-kind comprehensive global treaty on cybercrime, 72 nations signed the new United Nations Convention against Cybercrime at Hanoi on October 2511. Even though the world is taking significant steps to counter this menace more effectively, the fact is, scam centre operations could not have flourished without official complicity at some level, thus allowing syndicates to operate vast compounds, traffic victims across borders, and launder the proceeds of crime with great ease and rapidity. This scourge of transnational scams should embarrass the region and prompt the ASEAN intergovernmental organization to act. The adoption of the ASEAN Declaration on Combating Cybercrime and Online Fraud12 last September will remain nothing more than a scribble on paper if the crackdown on networks is no more than cosmetic, as it has been thus far.
Seema Sengupta is a Kolkata-based journalist and columnist.
References
- https://media.odi.org/documents/The_rise_of_exploitation_in_scam_centres_in_southeast_asia.pdf ↩︎
- https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/2900-indians-rescued-from-cyber-scam-centres-in-se-asia-mea-tells-parl-panel-101743620506692.html ↩︎
- https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/indians-among-hundreds-in-myanmar-scam-hub-exodus-101761435495127.html ↩︎
- https://www.medianama.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/rsnew_Committee_site_Committee_File_ReportFile_15_197_254_2025_8_12-1.pdf ↩︎
- https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/cybersecurity/indias-cyber-fraud-epidemic-rs-22845-crore-lost-in-just-a-year-206-jump-from-previous-year-says-government/articleshow/122840099.cms ↩︎
- https://www.livemint.com/news/india/indians-lost-staggering-7-000-crore-to-online-scams-in-5-months-of-2025-report/amp-11752556670962.html ↩︎
- https://www.npr.org/2025/10/26/nx-s1-5584097/southeast-asian-scam-networks-are-booming-governments-are-starting-to-take-action ↩︎
- https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/05/1163521 ↩︎
- https://news.un.org/en/audio/2024/07/1151871 ↩︎
- https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/9/12/un-warns-online-scam-centres-hitting-southeast-asia-moving-to-east-timor ↩︎
- https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/press/releases/2025/October/un-convention-against-cybercrime-opens-for-signature-in-hanoi–viet-nam.html ↩︎
- https://en.antaranews.com/news/380601/asean-adopts-declaration-to-combat-cybercrime-and-online-fraud ↩︎