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Human Trafficking on the Rise as Online Scam Hubs Go Global
- By March 2025, Interpol reported that human trafficking-driven online scam centers have expanded globally, involving victims from 66 countries across all continents.
- This crisis originated in several countries across Southeast Asia, where individuals were deceived by fraudulent employment opportunities, confined within facilities, and coerced into operating online scams.
- Victims endure violence, sexual exploitation, debt-based extortion, and are often blackmailed with ransom demands to leave these scam compounds.
- Cyril Gout, Interpol's Acting Executive Director, emphasized that addressing the fast-expanding nature of this crime demands enhanced collaboration and stronger partnerships among law enforcement agencies worldwide.
- Interpol highlighted that trafficking pathways are increasingly used to illegally transport narcotics, weapons, and threatened animal species, calling for an urgent and unified international law enforcement effort.
12 Articles
12 Articles
Online Fraud Relies on a Horrifying Slave Labor Complex
Discussion of cyberfraud tends to focus on people who are cheated out of their money by scammers. But this vastly lucrative industry also relies on the forced labor of those who have been trafficked to work in prisonlike compounds in Southeast Asia.
Interpol is warning of a spike in human trafficking linked to online fraud, saying it is a global crisis involving more than 100,000 victims from 66 countries around the world.
Deutsche Welle
World NewsHuman trafficking on the rise as online scam hubs go global
International police body Interpol says scam centers that use human trafficking victims to carry out their crimes have gone global. Once limited to Southeast Asia, the criminal model is spreading — and uses AI.
Interpol has issued a warning about the rapid expansion of cyber scam centers that exploit victims of human trafficking, calling the situation a “global crisis.” The complexes, where people are forced to commit online fraud, began to emerge in Southeast Asia but have now been identified in at least four new countries in […]
AI-driven human trafficking scams from Southeast Asia spreading globally
Interpol reveals new crime trend: human trafficking-driven online scam centres forcing victims to commit fraud, rapidly spreading from Southeast Asia to all continents, enhanced by AI and other crimes.
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