BANGKOK – Interpol said on Dec 8 that its first operation targeting human trafficking-fuelled cyberfraud showed the criminal industry was going global, spreading beyond its origins in South-east Asia, with scam centres emerging as far away as Latin America.

The global police coordination body said law enforcement from more than 20 countries in October carried out inspections at hundreds of trafficking and smuggling hot spots, many known to be used to traffic victims to commit online fraud “on an industrial scale, while enduring abject physical abuse”.

The coordinated operation, which led to hundreds of arrests, demonstrated the “expanding geographical footprint” of the crime, the agency said, with examples such as Malaysians lured to Peru by promises of highly paid work and Ugandan nationals taken to Dubai, then Thailand and Myanmar, where they were confined under armed guard and taught to defraud banks.

While most cases still occur in South-east Asia, Ms Rosemary Nalubega, assistant director for vulnerable communities at Interpol, said in a statement that “this modus operandi is spreading, with victims sourced from other continents and new scam centres appearing as far afield as Latin America”.

The phenomenon emerged in South-east Asia, where the United Nations says hundreds of thousands of people have been trafficked by criminal gangs and forced to work in scam centres and other illegal online operations that have sprung up in recent years.

The fast-growing scam centres are generating billions of US dollars in revenue each year, the UN said.

A Reuters investigation in November detailed the emergence of the crime and its financing, examining how a crypto account registered in the name of a Chinese national in Thailand received millions of dollars from a crypto wallet that a United States blockchain analysis firm said was linked to scams. REUTERS