Trafficked, beaten and raped: raids reveal scale of abuse of women in Asia’s cyberscam centres

Hundreds of thousands of people have been trafficked into the Golden Triangle’s scam compounds, where day-to-day life consists of forced labour, cramped living conditions and beatings. For women, there is the additional trauma of sexual abuse. Illustration: Masha Foya/The Guardian

Late one evening in October 2023, Sarah* felt labour pains starting. It was 11pm, but at the cyberscam compound inside Laos’ Golden Triangle, workers were logging on for a long night shift, scamming Americans online.

Every night, workers sat at their computers until the early hours, building fake profiles of glamorous, jet-setting women on Facebook and Instagram. Sarah trawled the web to find older men to target with messages, where she fawned over their jobs, asked how their day had been and exchanged photos of luxury travel and beach trips. Each conversation she had was meticulously designed to follow a multi-day script, and monitored by bosses who walked up and down the long rows of desks.