He scammed people for their money from Myanmar, but he was also a victim

NEW YORK – Internet scammers steal billions from Americans each year. In one workroom in South-east Asia, where dozens of fraudsters trolled dating apps for fresh victims, they would beat a giant drum and chant each time they successfully duped someone into sending them money.

“It was a whole celebration,” said Mr Jalil Muyeke, a 32-year-old from Uganda who witnessed the festivities from inside a compound in Myanmar.

Mr Muyeke was also a victim. But the masterminds behind these schemes did not drain his bank account. Instead, he said, they stole seven months of his life, forcing him to work on their scams.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been lured into scamming operations. In his case, he was ensnared through a promising job opportunity. After a harrowing journey spanning thousands of miles, he was trapped inside one of hundreds of compounds in South-east Asia, often controlled by Chinese-organised crime rings and set up for industrial-scale scamming.

These fraud farms – some of which are repurposed casinos that were shuttered during pandemic lockdowns – are often staffed with trafficked workers labouring under the threat of severe beatings, electric shock or worse.

“Cyber-enabled fraud perpetrated by powerful transnational criminal networks has evolved into a thriving multibillion-dollar illicit industry that now exceeds the GDP (gross domestic product) of several countries in South-east Asia combined,” said Mr John Wojcik, regional analyst at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

Mr Muyeke’s captors specialised in scams known as pig butchering, a long con where fraudsters gain a person’s trust under the pretence of a budding romance or friendship (the fattening of a hog), before defrauding the victim (the slaughter). They slowly introduce the idea of investing – in crypto, for example – and then suggest sending money to a legitimate-seeming app.

Once the victims do, their investment seemingly grows, encouraging them to send more. But they cannot cash out – the money is in an account the scammer controls.

The victims are left financially and emotionally devastated, but so, too, are many of the workers carrying out the schemes.

An unexpected journey

Last summer, an old school friend told Mr Muyeke about a six-month contract job in Bangkok doing data entry and online marketing. He was told it paid US$2,500 (S$3,260) a month – an enticing sum for a go-getter living in one of the world’s poorest countries. He and his girlfriend were expecting a baby, and the opportunity seemed too good to pass up.

“I thought if I could go make some money for six months, I might miss his birth, but I would be back in time to raise him and to give him a better future,” he said.

Mr Muyeke, the son of two teachers, had been working as a mattress sales supervisor in Kampala before he left for Bangkok, along with another recruit.

After they landed, a Thai police officer, who already had their photos, was waiting for them and stamped their passports. He pointed to the exit, where they found their driver waiting.

It quickly became clear that something was wrong.

Using a translation app, the driver told them they would be driving for an hour, but Mr Muyeke knew Bangkok was just minutes from the airport. Trapped in the back seat with no mobile service, he began to panic.

The three men travelled for another eight hours. At around midnight, they stopped at a restaurant, then headed for a hotel. Mr Muyeke dragged his bed in front of his door and stayed up all night.

The next morning, they drove to the Moei River, which divides Thailand and Myanmar. A man grabbed their bags and threw them into a canoe. Mr Muyeke spotted “a ragged building” across the water and men with guns.

“At that time, I would say my spirit had left my body,” he said. “I was scared to the bone.”

After crossing the river, they were told to get into another car. There were more men, more guns.

He had no idea where he was, and his mind raced to dark places – maybe those crazy stories he had heard were true, and he had been trafficked for organ harvesting.

“In my head, I had accepted my fate,” he said.

Looking back, he saw red flags. For example, he received a three-month tourist visa, even though he was supposed to be working for six months. His recruiter friend told him they would fix it later.

Mr Muyeke was taken to a compound known as Dong Feng. He was led to an office, where he met a Chinese manager. He felt incredibly tense but breathed a little easier when he ran into his Ugandan recruiter, who served as the company’s translator.

“Nobody is killing you,” Mr Muyeke recalled him saying. “Nobody is taking your kidneys.”

He was coerced into signing a document that said he had gone there willingly. Next, they took blood samples – he was told they were testing for HIV and other diseases – and then went to a market to buy some basics, including a one-inch-thick mattress and sandals.

“It is a whole village inside those walls,” Mr Muyeke said.

He and his travel companion were led to their small dormitory room, with four sets of bunk beds, which soon became crowded as the rest of its occupants filed in after their shift. His recruiter was among them.

“I am so sorry,” he recalled him saying. “We shall make some money and go back home.”

Mr Muyeke was devastated.

The next morning, he was led to a manager’s office and given a contract he could not read, because it was in Chinese. Because they had paid his travel costs, he was told, he would be paid US$400 a month for six months, not the US$2,500 promised.

He initially resisted, but the translator warned him not to. “He tells me: ‘My friend, things are not what they look like here. You have to sign. Or else these guys will do bad things to you.’”

Before they left, the manager asked the translator if Mr Muyeke knew what kind of work they would be doing.

“Online marketing and data entry,” Mr Muyeke said.

The manager corrected him.

“Here, we are scamming,” Mr Muyeke recalled him saying. “This is World War III.”

Scamming for survival

Mr Muyeke’s working day began at 8pm, just as many of his targets on the other side of the world were having their morning coffee.

He was given a laptop and three iPhones, and instructed to download dating apps and slip into the character loaded into his dating profile: an attractive fashion designer living in San Francisco’s Russian Hill neighbourhood who dabbled in crypto and posted images of herself at nice hotels and beautiful beaches.

It is a typical profile for romance and confidence scams, which in 2023 cost Americans alone an estimated US$652 million, according to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Internet Crime Complaint Centre. Many more cases go unreported.

The woman whose photo was used for the fashion designer character was from Uzbekistan and was also drawn into the scammer’s den through a fake job offer. Known as “the model” inside the compound, she was available for video and voice calls and other photos.

Mr Muyeke’s assignment was to connect with American and Canadian men, preferably white and over the age of 40, since they were likely to have worked and saved for several years.

“We always targeted people on dating sites who seemed to have their financial lives sorted,” he said.

Using a script, he was expected to persuade at least two prospects daily to provide their phone numbers so they could continue their blossoming romance off the dating app, on WhatsApp or Telegram.

After the target gave up his direct number, the workers took screenshots of the conversation on the dating app and handed him off to a higher-level scammer who would continue the conversation over text.

“Most of us were doing it because we wanted to survive there,” Mr Muyeke said. “We never really wanted to scam anyone. I looked at it as if I was in a prison. Let me do my time and let me get out of here.”

But he was working 17-hour shifts, seven days a week, with no release date in sight.

“They keep you there for as long as they can,” he said. “Until you are not productive.”

An escape

After four months, Mr Muyeke was spent – he even started warning victims not to fall for the scams in messages he immediately deleted.

His managers disciplined him for declining productivity with hundreds of push-ups, extra hours and runs around the parking lot.

During his fifth month, he said, his operation – and its workers – was sold to an even stricter enterprise. The new bosses fined their labourers for everything, including going to the washroom for more than five minutes, Mr Muyeke said. A Chinese teenage boy he knew was tortured so badly, he came back to the workroom without fingernails.

Desperate, Mr Muyeke proposed a deal to his captors: Let him go, and he would take a sick Ugandan woman with him, relieving them of that burden.

Surprisingly, they agreed. Nearly seven months after he was captured, he was released in February.

But he was not free yet.

Mr Muyeke and two women were left at a bus terminal in Mae Sot, a Thai city bordering Myanmar, with expired visas and roughly US$810. Through the eyes of law enforcement, they would most likely be viewed as criminals.

Having done some research before his release, he contacted the International Organisation for Migration, an intergovernmental group. After an agonising wait for a callback, the organisation suggested a hotel where they would be safe.

Though Thailand has a procedure to help victims, it can take up to two months to complete an investigation – and victims’ experiences often depend on those processing them and any biases they may harbour. Online scamming, for example, is not always regarded as a form of “forced criminality”, according to the Humanity Research Consultancy.

“The burden of proving their innocence falls on the victims,” said Ms Mina Chiang, director of the consultancy.

Mr Muyeke said they were advised that they might not have enough evidence to prove they were trafficked, nor did they want to risk prolonging their stay – so they chose another path.

They turned themselves in to the immigration office, where officers told them they saw similar cases daily. They were held in a cell overnight and taken to court the next morning: Mr Muyeke said he and the two women were each fined US$44 for overstaying their visas.

But they could not just hop on to the next plane. They spent about a week jailed in a detention centre in Mae Sot before being transferred to another centre in Bangkok, where Mr Muyeke was separated from the women and denied access to his phone.

He slept on the floor of his cell for roughly three more weeks before his luck turned. A fellow detainee’s wife smuggled in a phone, which Mr Muyeke used to reach his brother, whom he had contacted months earlier. After a month in detention, he had a plane ticket home.

Walking through the airport in Ethiopia before his connecting flight to Kampala, he was overcome with emotion.

“I entered the washroom and cried for close to one hour,” he said.

He landed in Kampala on April 4, with less than US$15 in his pocket and three months after his son was born.

“To be home, and then you have someone looking at you, wondering who is this and then giving you a sheepish smile,” he said. “It was amazing.”

Easing back into his life has been challenging, but, slowly, he is regaining his footing. Crowds make him uncomfortable, and a recent visit to an office with computers shook him up. Starting therapy has helped, but finding a job – ideally in information technology – has been difficult. In the meantime, he has been researching human trafficking as an intern at the Humanity Research Consultancy.

“A lot of bad things are happening out there,” he said. “I got lucky.” NYTIMES