UN: 80 Nations' Citizens Trafficked Into Scam Centres

Hundreds of thousands of people are being trafficked every year into forced online scam operations, the United Nations' migration agency warned on Tuesday, describing a rapidly expanding criminal industry that lures job seekers with fake advertisements before locking them inside guarded compounds and forcing them to defraud victims worldwide.

IOM Director-General Amy Pope told journalists in Geneva that victims are now being drawn from more than 80 countries, and the caseload shows no sign of slowing. “Unless we take the issue quite seriously, we anticipate it will continue to grow,” she said.

فہرست

01

The Scale of the Crisis

02

How Victims Are Lured and Trapped

03

The Financial Toll

04

Victims, Not Criminals

The Scale of the Crisis

The International Organization for Migration issued its alert ahead of World Day Against Trafficking in Persons, marked on 30 July under the 2026 theme “Trapped Behind the Scam.” Between 2022 and 2025, the IOM assisted more than 3,500 victims of forced criminality in South-East Asia, drawn from 39 countries.

The most affected nationalities include Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Bangladesh, according to IOM data. Pope emphasised that the trafficking networks are “specifically playing out across Asia,” where scam compounds can hold hundreds of thousands of trafficked workers.

How Victims Are Lured and Trapped

The trafficking model follows a consistent pattern. Recruiters target people who speak English well and often hold graduate degrees, advertising what appear to be ordinary jobs on social media platforms. Once victims arrive at the promised workplace, they are locked inside compounds, stripped of their passports and phones, and placed under constant watch.

Many are beaten or threatened and forced through violence and debt bondage to run scam operations that target individuals around the world. “They're often subjected to physical or mental abuse. They are often unable to leave,” Pope said.

The Financial Toll

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has put the losses from scam offences across East and South-East Asia, Australia, and New Zealand at between $88.3 billion and $114.1 billion for 2025 alone. The figure underscores how these forced operations have become a multibillion-dollar criminal enterprise.

Victims, Not Criminals

The IOM has taken a firm position that people forced to run scams from inside these compounds are trafficking victims, not criminals, and should be protected rather than prosecuted. The agency's stance challenges the legal treatment many survivors face when they escape or are rescued from scam centres.

The alert comes as law enforcement agencies across multiple jurisdictions grapple with the cross-border nature of the crime. The IOM's Geneva briefing was intended to press governments to treat the issue as a humanitarian and law enforcement priority before the trafficking networks expand further.