NEW DELHI: The Asia pacific Group on money laundering in its latest report on cybercrime hubs in Myanmar, Lao PDR and Cambodia has revealed that Indian nationals are among victims of several countries trafficked to these cyber hubs and kept as slaves, trained to operate various scams like investment, romance, impersonation, social media and gaming.These cybercrime hubs are controlled by Chinese nationals who also tortured these “slaves” through coercion methods, including electric shock, dark room and isolation room confinement, physical abuse, fines and mental torture.Cyber scam hubs are mainly located in the Golden Triangle region along border areas between Thailand, Myanmar, Lao PDR and Cambodia, besides the northern border of Myanmar with China and the Philippines. Some of them operated from special economic zones. An inter-governmental body like the Financial Action Task Force, the Sydney-based APG initiated this study led by Indonesia and UN Office on Drugs and Crime with a team comprised of 24 experts from the govts of Australia, Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Solomon Islands, Singapore, Vietnam and UAE.The study examined the emerging nexus between human trafficking and cyber-enabled financial crime, drawing upon the debriefings of 15 Indian nationals repatriated from Myanmar, Lao PDR, and Cambodia between 2023 and 2024. The individuals were recruited under the pretext of high-paying customer-service or IT jobs, transported through Thailand, and then coerced to work in criminal “scam compounds” operated by transnational syndicates, it said.“Victims were mostly young men (20-35 age group) from nine Indian states, recruited via social media or personal networks, who paid upfront fees (Rs 50-70,000). Compounds were run by Chinese-speaking syndicates, with multi-national workforces and strict control (passport confiscation, physical/psychological abuse),” the report has said.The report further revealed that these slave workers were sold between scam compounds, where they were subjected to confinement, violence and debt bondage. “Interception operations and large-scale rescues have revealed victims from a variety of nationalities and regions, suggesting that recruitment practices have expanded beyond solely regional contexts. Workers are forced to conduct investment fraud, impersonation schemes, romance scams, and illegal online gambling platforms, with performance enforced through physical abuse and threats,” it added.
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Crypto-based financial systems served as core enabling mechanisms.Other examples cited by the agency related to large-scale use of mule accounts and SIM cards from India, which exploited the “vulnerable population”, which were unemployed youth and drug addicts. In one case, muule bank accounts and SIM cards from Punjab were supplied to cyber fraudsters in the Philippines, facilitating scams totalling over Rs 40 crore. The unemployed youth were lured with fake jobs, asked to open accounts and provide their SIMs, which were couriered to the Philippines.
