Scam Factories: the inside story of Southeast Asia’s brutal fraud compounds

Scam Factories is a special multimedia and podcast series by The Conversation that explores the inner workings of Southeast Asia’s brutal scam compounds.

The Conversation’s digital storytelling and podcast teams collaborated with three researchers: Ivan Franceschini, a lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Melbourne; Ling Li, a PhD candidate at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice; and Mark Bo, an independent researcher.

The researchers have spent the past few years interviewing nearly 100 survivors of these compounds and documenting the rise of the industry in Southeast Asia for a forthcoming book.

Scam Factories will unfold across three multimedia articles and three podcast episodes this week. We’ll update this page as more is published.

Part 1

Our first article explores how people are lured into the industry and what life is like inside the compounds, where scammers are forced to work long hours and are often subjected to violence.

And in our first podcast episode, No skills required, our researchers travel to a village in Cambodia called Chrey Thom to see what these compounds look like. And we hear from two survivors, a Ugandan man we’re calling George and a Malaysian woman we’re calling Lee, about how they were recruited into compounds in Laos and Myanmar. Listen on The Conversation Weekly podcast.

The Conversation contacted all the companies mentioned in this series for a comment, except Jinshui, which we couldn’t contact. We did not receive a response from any of them.

Credits

The podcast series was written and produced by Gemma Ware with production assistance from Katie Flood and Mend Mariwany. Sound design by Michelle Macklem. Leila Goldstein was our producer in Cambodia and Halima Athumani recorded for us in Uganda. Hui Lin helped us with Chinese translation. Photos by Roun Ry, KDA, Halima Athumani and Ivan Franceschini.

Justin Bergman at The Conversation in Australia edited the articles in the series and Matt Garrow worked on the graphical elements of the stories. Series oversight and editing help from Ashlynne McGhee.