Blocks of tall and shiny buildings rapidly emerge like a mirage on Myanmar’s war-torn border with Thailand. They are called "Scam Cities" and they are home to a lucrative yet deadly nexus of fraud, money laundering and human trafficking. Here, thousands of digital labourers work day and night in order to devise online scam operations, from cat fishing for love to crypto frauds that largely target Western countries. Lured by fake job adverts and kidnapped by armed groups, these employees are soon trapped in a slavery machine built for fraud purposes. We made our way to the Thai side of the Thai-Myanmar border, where we put in an application for one of these ‘jobs’. Our contact with the scam syndicate allowed us to investigate a new form of human trafficking, revealing a largely hidden world marked by violence, desperation, and a booming multi-billion-dollar industry.
