Image credit: Civic Studios. Still from Scam City series.
Have you, or has someone you know, ever received a scam phone call from an unrecognised number asking for your bank details, offering a vague promotion, or encouraging you to invest in cryptocurrency?
The person calling you might be in a situation of forced labour and forced criminality. In this blog, we look at the growing phenomenon and shed some light on the experiences of the people forced into fraud operations.
In April 2026, Anti-Slavery International partnered with Civic Studios to shed light on the experiences of people who are exploited through forced criminality in the scamming industry with a micro-drama series.
‘Scam centres’ operate worldwide and have been called a human rights crisis by UN experts, as people are lured into scamming networks under false pretences or are kidnapped, trafficked, and ‘sold’ to similar operations within and across borders.
The number of scam centres has grown exponentially since the COVID-19 pandemic, with the largest ones reported to be across Southeast Asia.
Victims of scams may suffer significant financial loss as a result of the cybercrime industry. But we must also remember that the people forced to execute these scams are victims of a crime themselves, who may have lost their rights, freedom, and sometimes their lives.
To adequately address the issue, we must encourage fraud awareness and, crucially, address the root causes of forced criminality in these centres. We also need to ensure that states have systems in place that both protect survivors and prevent them from being criminalised for acts committed as a result of their exploitation, while ensuring that those who profit from these crimes are effectively brought to justice.
Maya’s story
Cyberfraud has turned into a multi-billion-dollar industry, with Britons losing over £620 million to fraud in the first half of 2025. But who is behind them?
Civic Studios’ Scam City micro-drama follows the story of Maya, who, in the first episode, is seen carrying out a ‘romance scam.’ But it is soon revealed that she was trafficked into, and is now trapped in a scam compound, and forced to carry out scams under threat of violence and further trafficking.
Throughout the series, Maya’s daily life and living conditions at a scam compound in Cambodia are uncovered as she tries to find a way out.
These are heavily securitised multi-story buildings that serve as sleeping quarters, workplaces, and cafeterias for trafficked scam workers. Survivor testimonies suggest that these compounds can host up to tens of thousands of workers.
While Maya’s story is fictional, it is unfortunately many people’s reality.
The real lives of people trafficked into scam centres
Individuals who are forced to commit scams experience high levels of physical and psychological violence in these compounds. They are coerced into defrauding unsuspecting victims out of money and if they refuse work, fail to meet their daily quota, or try to escape, they risk being subject to torture, sexual assault, and even death.
Survivors have shared accounts of wage theft, debt bondage, long working hours with little to no days off, arbitrary detention and solitary confinement, starvation, small, overcrowded, and unsanitary living conditions, and much more. These are indicators of exploitation and forced labour.
Traffickers exploit the vulnerabilities that individuals already face, like poverty or displacement as a result of war or climate change. They are recruited, tricked, or coerced into this line of work in the hope of improving their personal and financial situations or due to debt bondage or threats to their families. There have also been reports of entrapped workers’ families being asked for large ransoms in exchange for their release.
For survivors who flee or are rescued from scam centres, life doesn’t simply return to normal.
Even those who escape without lasting physical injuries may be left with deep psychological harm. Many face lifelong effects like PTSD, anxiety, and depression.
Many survivors struggle to reintegrate into society, facing stigma from friends and family, financial hardship, and unemployment due to migration and ransom-related debts. Others, upon escape, are held for weeks in car parks, military camps, or immigration detention centres while awaiting processing. Many may also be unable or unwilling to return home due to fear of punishment for crimes they were forced to commit while being held in forced labour.
Without access to money, medical care, visas, passports, or safe pathways home, survivors can get trapped in insecure states of limbo. This lack of protection reinforces cycles of poverty and vulnerability, increasing the risk of re-trafficking – particularly when returning to scam farms may seem like the only way to secure basic shelter.
What needs to happen?
Greater rights-based protection and support for victims and survivors are urgently needed. It is essential that they are not criminalised for offences committed as a result of being trafficked and exploited.
Instead, the drivers that make people vulnerable to trafficking into cyber-criminality, like poverty, limited access to decent work, and a lack of safe migration pathways, must be addressed. Focusing on punishing survivors, while ignoring the root causes behind this phenomenon, cannot be the answer.
We must continue raising awareness about the number of scams growing across the world. But if we do not also address the grave human rights abuses happening within this growing industry, traffickers will continue to profit from the exploitation of people forced into criminality and people on the receiving end of fraudulent calls.
No one should ever be forced to work and stripped of their rights for profit. Survivors deserve rehabilitation, effective access to justice and the chance to rebuild their lives in peace.