MIT Technology Review: Inside a romance scam compound—and how people get tricked into being there

The true scale of this type of fraud is hard to estimate, but the United Nations reported in 2023 that hundreds of thousands of people had been trafficked to work as online scammers in Southeast Asia. One 2024 study, from the University of Texas, estimates that the criminal syndicates that run these businesses have stolen at least $75 billion since 2020.

These schemes have been going on for more than two decades, but they’ve started to capture global attention only recently, as the syndicates running them increasingly shift from Chinese targets toward the West. And even as investigators, international organizations, and journalists gradually pull back the curtain on the brutal conditions inside scamming compounds and document their vast scale, what is far less exposed is the pivotal role platforms owned by Big Tech play throughout the industry—from initially coercing individuals to become scammers to, finally, duping scam targets out of their life savings.