Every day that he was locked up in a scam compound in Southeast Asia, George thought about how to get out. “We looked for means of escaping, but it was hard,” he told The Conversation.
George, whose name has been changed to protect his identity, managed to secretly contact a rescue organisation in Myanmar, where he was being held. That set in motion a chain of events that would eventually lead to his freedom, but it would take months before he made it back home to his family in Uganda.
Hundreds of thousands of people like George are estimated to have been caught up in the brutal scamming industry in Southeast Asia, many forced into criminality against their will.
Scam Factories is a podcast series from The Conversation Weekly taking you inside these brutal fraud compounds. It accompanies a series of multimedia articles on The Conversation.
In our third and final episode, Great Escapes, we find out the different ways people manage to escape and at what costs, what it takes for them to get home, and what is being done to clamp down on the industry.
The Conversation collaborated for this series with three researchers: Ivan Franceschini, a lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Melbourne; Ling Li, a PhD candidate at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, and Mark Bo, an independent researcher.
They’ve spent the past few years researching the expansion of scam compounds in the region for a forthcoming book. They’ve interviewed nearly 100 survivors of the compounds, analysed maps and financial documents related to the scam industry and tracked scammers online to find out how these compounds work.
Escaping a scam compound is rife with risk. Those who succeed then face persistent questions from authorities and their families about whether they are truly a victim.
The Conversation contacted all the companies mentioned in this multimedia series for comment, except Jinshui who we could not contact. We did not receive a response from any of them.
This episode was written and produced by Gemma Ware, with assistance from Mend Mariwany and Katie Flood. Leila Goldstein was our producer in Cambodia and Halima Athumani recorded for us in Uganda. Hui Lin helped us with Chinese translation. Sound design by Michelle Macklem and editing help from Ashlynee McGhee and Justin Bergman.
Newsclips in this episodes are from CNA, Reuters and Al Jazeera English.
Listen to The Conversation Weekly podcast via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our RSS feed or find out how else to listen here.
FraudAlert: Fraud is defined as wrongful or criminal deception intended to result in financial or personal gain.
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