Artillery fire thundered. Windows shattered. Roofs caved in. And thousands of foreign workers – many who had been tricked and trafficked into the vast cyber-fraud industry that has flourished in south-east Asia – fled.
For a brief moment, the regional crackdown appeared to mark a turning point in one of the world’s fastest-growing criminal industries, which has defrauded millions of people globally and generated billions of dollars for organised crime networks. Police and troops across Thailand, Cambodia and Myanmar conducted mass raids to empty and demolish some of the region’s massive scam centres. But for many of those who escaped, freedom was only the beginning of another ordeal.
