Human trafficking on the rise as online scam hubs go global
Human trafficking-fueled scam centers have significantly expanded their operations worldwide, according to a crime trend update released on Monday by the international police agency Interpol.
Hubs where trafficking victims are forced to take part in online fraud first emerged in a few Southeast Asian nations, but investigators are now also uncovering similar fraud centers in other regions.
Where are scam centers spreading?
According to the international police organization, victims now come from 66 countries across all continents, highlighting what Interpol describes as a "
global crisis
" involving hundreds of thousands of people.
Scam centers are now increasingly found in other regions, including the Middle East, West Africa, fast emerging as a new regional hub, and Central America.
Victims are often lured with fake job offers and then held captive in scam compounds. Many are blackmailed over alleged debts, beaten, sexually exploited, and in some cases tortured or raped.
Inside these centers, they are forced to run online scams, mostly targeting people abroad to steal money.
A 2024 Interpol-led operation exposed dozens of cases where victims were coerced into committing fraud, including a raid on an industrial-scale scam centre in the Philippines.
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That same year, police dismantled a centre in Namibia where 88 youths were forced to scam others.
Emerging technologies are fuelling this trend further. The crime update notes a surge in the use of artificial intelligence, from generating fake job ads to creating deepfake profiles for "sextortion" and romance scams.
Who are the victims?
Interpol says the pool of those preyed upon has widened significantly.
While early
human trafficking
victims were mainly Chinese-speaking and came from China, Malaysia, Thailand or Singapore, people are now being trafficked to such hubs from South America, East Africa and Western Europe.
"Tackling this rapidly globalizing threat requires a coordinated international response," said said Interpol's acting head of police services Cyril Gout.
Who are the people traffickers?
The report found that about 90 per cent of human trafficking facilitators came from Asia, while 11% were from South America or Africa.
About 80 per cent of these facilitators were men, with 61 per cent aged between 20 and 39.
Online scam centers were initially concentrated in Cambodia, with additional trafficking hubs later uncovered in Laos and Myanmar.
Today, similar operations have been identified in at least four more Asian countries, and evidence shows the model is spreading to other regions such as West Africa, where cyber-enabled financial crime is already common.
In its findings, Interpol warned that the spread of such criminal networks needs urgent, coordinated action to disrupt trafficking routes and support victims.
Interpol said that these criminal hubs are increasingly intertwined with other major transnational crimes, demanding a globally coordinated response.
Trafficking routes used for scam centers are being exploited for smuggling drugs, firearms, and endangered wildlife like tigers and pangolins, Interpol said.
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