The Scam Economy Is Modern Slavery With Wi-Fi -By Fransiscus Nanga Roka

Catching up with the United States and Britain starting as early as this year, an uncomfortable truth has begun to dawn on the United States. The online scam centres of Southeast Asia are not simply cybercrime operations. It is a digital plantations where humans are sold, tortured and exploited for mega multimillion dollar criminal networks.

Other groundbreaking efforts, like the signing of a memorandum of understanding (the first of its kind) on September 3, 2026 between two similar law enforcement agencies in the United States and Britain, the US Justice Department’s Scam Centre Strike Force and Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service and by the National Crime Agency. The partnership will operate parallel probes, sharing information about shared criminals and determining which jurisdiction should prosecute specific cases.

Who are they targeting? Mainly Chinese triads running factories on a massive scale in places such as Cambodia, Myanmar or Laos.

What happens inside? Victims lured by fake technology or administrative job advertisements come applying for what they hoped would be a legitimate job. Passports confiscated, movement constrained and labour weaponised. They are forced to create fraudulent affairs and investment relationships with strangers abroad under threats of beatings, torture or being sold to another compound. Britain was itself indirectly affected by its own sanctions announcement, detailing trafficked workers held at risk of being tortured as part of operations including on the sprawling “#8 Park” facility in Cambodia that can accommodate 20,000 people.

How does the crime work? These syndicates run what are called “pig-butchering” scams: operators will spend days or weeks building an emotional bond with victims only to lead them up the garden path towards invented crypto platforms. You are based on data until November 2023 Early withdrawals add the appearance of metabolic legitimacy. Once pulled into the con, victims find their savings transferred to these accounts while fake dashboards celebrate profits only for the slick money actually l Onlaundered through stablecoins, front companies and professional “money houses.

Why has this industry flourished? Because globalization outpaced states in the speed at which victims connected with criminals and money, while states lagged behind in connecting their evidence, their laws and their prosecutors. A victim can be based in London, message on an American platform, send dollar backed stablecoins and get scammed by a coerced worker held hostage in Myanmar with managers laundering revenue through Cambodia. The fact that jurisdiction was so fragmented became organized crime’s best friend.

The scale is staggering. US authorities are estimating that investment fraud in cryptocurrency costs Americans almost $10 billion every year. American losses grew from $4.57 billion in 2023 to about $8.65 billion in 2025, a staggering increase of 89%.

The enforcement previous states shows the power and limitations of state. US authorities charged Prince Group chairman Chen Zhi with ordering forced-labor scam compounds and brought a civil forfeiture action against roughly 127,271 Bitcoin worth around $15 billion at the time. An indictment is not a conviction, and a forfeiture complaint is not dispositive of any return to victims.

At a later, separate point in time during what it calls “Disruption Week”, the private sector reportedly acted without coercion to close over 1.4 million social-media and email names and seize up to $3.8 million of cryptocurrency based on intelligence provided by government actors. But deleting accounts without arresting controllers just compels rebranding by syndicates.

The alliance therefore requires more than spectacular raids and geopolitical rhetoric. First, it needs to set up Joint Investigative Teams (JITS) with ASEAN states and develop a real-time protocol for sharing evidence of wallets, domains, subscriber records, and trafficking intelligence. Second, prosecutors need to separate criminal managers from forced workers, trafficking victims should be protected, compensated and safely returned home rather than locked up indiscriminately.

Third, tech firms, exchanges and stablecoin issuers must maintain evidence so we can disrupt repeat infrastructure and publish transparent enforcement numbers with judicial oversight and appeal. Fourth, assets must be frozen at the laundering stage and earmarked for restitution funds with independent auditing. Fifth, there must be sanctions against targeted officials, casinos etc. in states protectively sheltering compounds and helping them financially.

If that alliance is measured by the number of deleted accounts and not the number of liberated people, then it deserves to fail. The key crime is not just stolen crypto. It is human slavery turned into a growing global company.

Fransiscus Nanga Roka

Faculty of Law University 17 August 1945 Surabaya and Managing Partner Law Firm Victorious Indonesia