The Horrible 5-Month Life in Scamming Compounds
Hi, my name is Abdus Salam. I was born in 1996 and I am an ordinary Bangladeshi. I completed my Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree in Textile Engineering. My specialisation is Apparel Manufacturing Technology. I live in a very beautiful village with my lovely family of 7 members. I live with my parents, my elder brother, his wife and their 2 sweet kids. In 2022, the most significant incident of my life occurred. In this blog, I am going to share my stories.
It started in late 2021, when I had almost completed my BSc degree internee and was working full time in the textile industry. I had a job and studied at the same time because my family was not capable of supporting me financially during my studies. My monthly pay was around 200 USD, and it was very tough to survive on that salary in Dhaka city and cover my study costs. My father was a migrant worker and he spent all his savings on my brother's treatment and making a home for us. In my family, I am the only capable and physically fit person to make money for my family and support them. I was very much aware that, after my graduation, I would need to take all the responsibility for our family.
When I had just completed my graduation and was looking for a decent job to support my family, one of my school friends (best friend) reached out to me and offered me a well-paid job in Cambodia. He told me I had a Bachelor's degree and some other good skills like operating a computer well and speaking English, so I could go to Cambodia and make some good money for my family. He said his uncle had a recruiting agency that sends people to different countries as migrant workers and they were sending people to Cambodia. He said if I went there I would get a computer operator job in an online casino with an 800-1200 USD monthly salary (depending on my working capability). I was told they would also give me a yearly bonus and leave with a round-trip flight ticket to spend my leave with family. To get the job, I had to pay 3000 USD as a recruiting fee, including visa and flight ticket costs. I thought it would be a golden opportunity to make some good money for my family. I discussed it with my family, and they said it’s up to you, and I decided to go to Cambodia for the job. I asked my father for my recruiting fee, he mortgaged our pond and cropland and gave me the money.
Travelling from Bangladesh to Cambodia
In February 2022, I paid a 3000 USD recruiting fee, and my friend's uncle (the recruiter) started my travelling process to Cambodia. My friend's uncle offered to let me go on a ‘tourist’ visa, I said I wanted an employment visa. He said it would take 3 months to process, so it would be better to go with the tourist visa and after I arrive there the company would give me a work permit with the company name. He brainwashed me and made me agree to go with the tourist visa, and promised me he would manage everything. Since I resigned from my job in Bangladesh, I was in a hurry to go to Cambodia for the job so I agreed. This was my first mistake.
My recruiter gave me an e-visa and a round-trip flight ticket. They told me that a tourist visa required a round-trip flight ticket. On the 24th February 2022 they sent me to Dhaka airport and gave me specific instructions to follow, such as going to a particular immigration gate and desk. Since I had never been on a flight before, I thought it was fine to follow their instructions. However, the Dhaka immigration officer did not allow me to pass through the immigration process and rejected me. When they offloaded me, the immigration officer marked an offload case on my passport. My recruiter managed to withdraw that offload case from the Special Branch (SB) office with the help of another broker.
After I was rejected from immigration the first time, my recruiter trained me to lie at immigration and the recruiter made a verbal contract with an immigration officer. The immigration officer agreed to let me pass for a payment of 500 USD (50,000 BDT). Following this agreement, on 31 March 2022, the recruiter sent me to Dhaka airport again and instructed me, like the first time, to go to a specific immigration desk and use a code word. This time, before I went to the designated counter, an immigration officer approached me and took me to his office. After that, the officer allowed me to pass through immigration.
When I boarded the flight, the recruiter asked me for a selfie, which they sent to the Bangladeshi broker based on the Cambodian side. I guess the broker then forwarded that selfie to a group of Cambodian immigration officers. My transit flight was in Kuala Lumpur, and the next morning (1 April 2022), I arrived at Phnom Penh International Airport (Phnom Penh). I met two other Bangladeshi men on the flight. Later, I discovered all of our brokers might all from the same group. Before I went to any immigration counter in Phnom Penh, an immigration officer approached me and showed me the selfie I had taken on the flight. I was surprised. He also showed me photos of the other two men and asked where they were. I told him I had seen them and would find them. Within a few minutes, I located them and returned to him. After that, the officer directed us to a specific immigration counter and, without any questions, they allowed us to pass through Cambodian immigration.
When we came out of the airport, a group of Bangladeshi people picked us up. I believe they were assistants or partners of the Cambodian-side Bangladeshi broker. They took us to a very luxurious building, and the two main brokers introduced themselves as Shorif Ahmed, and Nazmul Hasan, who live in an Apartment on rent. Before I went to Cambodia my friend's uncle introduced me to Shorif over a video call and when I arrived there they introduced themselves to us.
At the apartment, they interviewed us, asking basic questions in English, such as introducing ourselves and testing our typing skills. After that, they took us to a well-secured compound for a job interview. We were a group of five people: three Bangladeshis and two Indians. At the compound, an Indian man came, selected one of the Indians, and rejected the rest of us without any interview.
The next morning, Shorif took us to a Chinese office. A Chinese person introduced himself as the owner of a big company and conducted our interview in the same manner as the one at the brokers' apartment. He selected four of us for the interview, asked us to give him our passports, and told us that he needed to extend our visas with the company name and work permit. We thought he was correct because we only had 30-day visas and no work permits, so we gave our passports to him. After that, in our presence, he gave a large amount of money to our broker, Shorif. We didn't understand what was happening at that moment. They gave us some food and sent us to a place called Dara Sakor in a car, which is 270 km away from Phnom Penh city. After a nine-hour drive, we arrived at that place in the middle of the night. When I got out of the car, I saw a casino in the Long Bay Century Hotel, well decorated and tightly secured. Seeing the casino made me very happy because I thought I would work there, as I had been promised a job in a casino.
My compound life
1st Compound: When we arrived in Dara Sakor at Long Bay Century Hotel, two Chinese men came to receive us and took us to our dormitory. After we chose our beds, they instructed us to visit our office. Feeling exhausted after the journey, I wasn't happy about having to go to the office immediately. The office was not in the same building as the casino I had seen earlier. Confused, I asked where we were going, pointing out that the casino was in the opposite direction. They explained that the casino wasn't our office; our office was on the other side, and they led the way.
Our office was located on the fourth floor. As we entered, I heard very loud music playing. I observed several large office rooms where many people were working on computers and mobile phones while listening to loud music. However, I didn't see any gambling areas as I had seen in movies. Without any introductions, the man who received us provided us with a computer, 4-5 iPhones, and 10 SIM cards. They showed us how to activate the SIM cards and instructed us to do so immediately. Although I requested to start work the next day due to exhaustion, they insisted we begin immediately. Thus, we started working by activating the SIM cards.
Before leaving the office, I was assigned to a team and was informed about our work schedule: 17:00 PM-22:00 PM, with a break from 22:00 PM-12:00 AM, followed by work from 12:00 AM-04:30 AM, another 30-minute break, and then work from 05:00 AM-7:00 AM. In our team, we had 10 members, including three Bangladeshis, six Indians, and one Nepali. We are under the management of one Taiwanese “Teacher Boss”, one Taiwanese Assistant Supervisor and one Chinese Supervisor.
The next day, the Teacher Boss taught us how to open a Twitter account and instructed us to create 10 accounts each. They introduced us to a Chinese app called 'Red Book (小红书),' similar to Instagram, and instructed us to find some Red Book accounts where we would find a large number of young girls' photos. For the ID names, they instructed us to choose popular English girls' names and add Chinese surnames. They also told us to set our locations as Singapore and Toronto, Canada on those Twitter accounts. When I asked our Teacher Boss why we were creating fake accounts, he simply told me not to ask questions and to follow his instructions.
We used photos of young Chinese girls for the accounts. The Teacher Boss taught us to respond to inquiries about our nationality by saying we were half Chinese and half Canadian. They also taught us various strategies to find people on Twitter, including using geocodes and social media pick-up hours to find people from specific areas. Additionally, they provided us with a scripted chat to establish relationships with clients (scammers referred to scam victims as 'clients' and 'customers'). During the initial chat, we collected primary information about the clients, especially their financial status, and then transitioned the conversation from Twitter to WhatsApp or Telegram. Our team maintained a Google information sheet where we recorded all the information about clients. Our Teacher Boss and Supervisors then took over the clients for further chatting, building strong relationships with them and gradually introducing them to cryptocurrency investments.
After one week of training, we were called into a meeting room and given a daily target: we had to connect with three clients via WhatsApp or Telegram numbers, meaning starting up the conversation and collecting all the basic information about them. Our Teacher Boss explained our daily target: 'We have a 10-member team. If everyone finds three people every day, collectively we will reach 30 people daily, and in a month, we will reach 900 people. Then, even if we lose 800 times or more, we will still get 100 people to try and convince them to invest.' This was very challenging, and if we failed to achieve our target, we had to work an extra 30 minutes for each client missed. After four or five days, they increased our target to five clients, applying the same rule of an extra 30 minutes for each missed client. With this rule in place, we found ourselves doing extra work every day because we were unable to meet our daily targets. Sometimes we succeeded, but most of the time we couldn't.
By the third week of my life in that scamming compound, I began contacting my brokers in Bangladesh and Cambodia to help me leave the company. However, they kept asking for more time, promising to take me out of that company within a week.
During my third week of work, one of my clients, an ex-Brazilian footballer working as a firefighter at that time, started investing 100 USDT (a stable cryptocurrency). Based on our performance after three weeks, they promoted me and an Indian colleague to leaders of a five-person team each. From that day on, the Supervisor began giving us physical punishments such as push-ups ranging from 25 to 75 times, or holding full body weight on the two elbows and toes for 5 to 15 minutes. This was extremely tough, especially after working 16-17 hours daily.
One day, our Taiwanese Teacher Boss called us and instructed us to target German people using geocode locations on Twitter. He mentioned that one of his clients from Germany had invested 81,000 USDT, so he believed we could also find potential clients from Germany. We started following these instructions.
Another time, a Chinese boss suddenly announced something to the speaker with joy, and some other Chinese people started playing drums and a big bell. Everyone was clapping. We didn't understand what was happening, but we started clapping too. I asked my Teacher Boss what had happened, and he told me 'One of their team members' clients from the USA just invested 240,000 USD.' I was frozen for a couple of seconds after hearing that.
I found a client from Finland who was very interested in cryptocurrency. He showed me he had more than 26,000 USD in Bitcoin (BTC). Using our training and the materials I was provided with, I began explaining to him why people should buy cryptocurrency and how to use it properly. Essentially, I was trying to persuade him to invest in our apps. He was convinced, but I was sold to another compound before he invested.
We would explain to clients/potential scammed victims in this way: “A couple of years ago, we lived on a 2G network and, slowly, now we are living in the 4G world and we are very close to the 5G world. In the very near future, 6G, 7G, etc. will come and people will have to use digital money instead of dollar bills to exchange anything, and cryptocurrency will be that money. We should prepare ourselves for that and advance ourselves with the modern world, so we should invest in cryptocurrency from now and walk a few steps ahead of ordinary people.”
I have learned that my Taiwanese Assistant Supervisor was also a human trafficking victim. One day, my phone broke, and my Assistant Supervisor tried to contact me before I arrived at the office. He asked why I hadn’t responded to his messages. I explained that my phone was broken, and he immediately gave me a phone, instructing me to 'always keep in touch with him' as 'the bosses are planning something dangerous'. When I inquired about their plans, he replied, 'I can't share that with you, but you guys should leave this place as soon as possible'. Soon after, new people started arriving at our office and conducting interviews with us. It was then that we learnt the bosses were planning to sell us to another company.
After 37 days of work, they indeed sold us to another company in Sihanoukville. Upon our departure, the company gave us 200 USD in an envelope. When we questioned our Assistant Supervisor and Teacher Boss about the amount, expressing our disappointment as we had been promised a higher salary for our 37 days of work, they advised us not to dwell on the money, but rather to leave the place as it was in our best interest. Our Assistant Supervisor and Teacher Boss had helped us a lot and saved us many times from harsh punishment, so we trusted them and decided to leave.
2nd Compound: On 10 May 2022, at midnight, the Assistant Supervisor and Chinese bosses took ten of us from Dara Sakor to Sihanoukville, where they conducted interviews in a scamming compound named Helory Real Estate (10.621053673223624, 103.50043298249359). A Bangladeshi friend I had met on the flight and I were both selected for that interview. A Chinese-speaking broker bought us. The rest were taken to other places and gradually lost contact with us. In this compound, I was sold to two different scam companies.
First, the Chinese-speaking broker sold me and my friend to a company owned by Chinese Malaysians, where everyone except the two of us was Malaysian. The company comprised only ten people and operated in a small room. Our Supervisor in that company initially assigned us the task of writing a believable and attractive story to share with clients, providing us with a demonstration. After we completed writing the story, he instructed us to find people from different countries, particularly Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, and Western countries. He instructed us to use various social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and different dating apps like OkCupid, Tinder, etc., to find people. Sometimes, he even provided us with a list of WhatsApp numbers to send messages to. Because of my experience in the first compound, where we just found people from Western countries for investment, I asked him why he was telling us to find people from countries such as Singapore, Malaysia, and Brunei as well? He answered, “I got my biggest investment/scam from a Singaporean, and that person invested 321,000 SGD. Another thing we have is a Malaysian girl who can send voice messages and talk with clients over phone calls”.
After only 9 days of working in that company, Malaysian people had some problems with Chinese people in the compound and decided to move to other compounds, leaving us behind back to the Chinese-speaking broker. In that time, I had almost convinced a few people to invest in such a short time, because after 4 days they started giving us punishments to do push-ups so I worked so hard. One of them did eventually invest and was scammed by me while working in my third company. Throughout this time, I continuously contacted my brokers in Bangladesh and Cambodia to get me out of the scamming compound. However, they merely promised and repeatedly took time from me, doing nothing to actually help me after selling me to Chinese criminals. I couldn't escape from the scamming compound for two reasons: firstly, it was highly guarded by security personnel, and secondly, I didn’t have my passport with me.
In this compound, there were four levels of security. The first was on every floor of the dormitory, the second was at the first gate of the compound, the third was at the second gate of the compound, and the fourth consisted of special security guards who were ex-army soldiers and officers dressed in black. Seven of them were from Nepal. I got to know their nationalities since I have spoken to some of them.
For a week I was left in my room, doing nothing. After a week, again I was sold to a new Chinese scam company in the same compound. At that time, there were only three Bangladeshis and the company owners. One boss provided us with 40 computers, one box of iPhones (estimated to be more than 50 phones) and other materials and instructed us to set up the office. The three of us set up the new office accordingly.
Gradually, 40 people joined us, most of whom were Chinese, with some Taiwanese, Malaysians, and Indians among them. After all the people joined the company, they gave us some scripts and successful scam chat histories to read and learn from. They instructed us to find people from the USA, Canada, and European countries using Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and dating apps like Tinder, Jaumo, Okcupid, Tantan, etc. We were told to build relationships with them, whether it be a friendship, romantic, or even a sexual relationship. The primary target was to gain the clients’ trust and slowly introduce them to cryptocurrency, but not about investment this time yet as we were waiting for their software developer to create a new fake trading app for the company.
After one month, when the fake trading app was ready, one of the bosses introduced us to the app, KHby-UOB, and trained us on how to use it. They also taught us about UOB-Kay Hian, a reputable brokerage company in Singapore that has a bank by the same name. After training us on how to use the app, they gave us a daily target to install and register clients on it. We were then instructed to advise our clients to buy USDT from real cryptocurrency wallets and recharge them on the app.
One common feature I noticed about the fake trading Apps was that they only offered three languages: English, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese. One of my clients from Pakistan made the first investment in the KHby-UOB app, and I had a few potential clients interested in investing. After observing my work, my manager assigned me as a Team Leader and asked me to support my colleagues in their work when they faced difficulties. Scammers not only force people to work for them but also utilise their skills to make money for themselves like they used my merit to convince people to scam. Victims like me were helpless; we had no choice but to obey their orders.
The Chinese bosses beat people with baseball bats, gave electric shocks, and tortured people in many different ways, and we couldn't do anything to save them or stop them. After working in that company for more than two months, my Bangladeshi friend found an organisation called the Global Anti-Scam Organization (GASO), which rescues victims like us from scamming compounds. He showed me a Facebook post about GASO’s rescue of some Taiwanese citizens from a scamming compound. When I saw the post, I recognised two people from the photo who were our roommates in the same company we were still working in. We then communicated with GASO and asked for help to rescue us from the compound. After waiting for one month and seeing no progress in our rescue process, we reached out to some Bangladeshi and Indian people who might be able to connect us to the Cambodian police. Soon after, Cambodian police texted me and asked for our information.
Despite knowing it might not work and could be difficult for us, we provided all the information to the police and informed our company. That day, they paid us a full month's salary for the first time, which was 700 USD. However, the next day, our Chinese Team Leader, who also works as an interpreter, directly asked me, 'Are you guys trying any trick to escape from this company? If you tell me the truth, I may protect you from punishment; otherwise, I can't.' When I heard that, I was shocked, realising that they knew everything. I admitted that we no longer wanted to work for the company because it was fraudulent, and every day we witnessed people being tortured in front of us.
'Who would be willing to work like that?' I asked. Then, the Team Leader informed our Supervisor, who came to beat us, but the Team Leader saved us. They then took back the 700 USD they had given us the previous night and sold me and my Bangladeshi friend to another compound called 'White Sands 2'.
3rd Compound: In the new company, a Chinese lady who spoke English conducted our interview and asked us about our previous work. Once we’d answered all of the questions, she understood that we were well aware of the work and knew how to do it. She also realised that we may not want to work and want to return home. She stated that if we were not willing to work, they wouldn’t buy us, and after buying us, if we attempted to escape, the consequences would not be good. We knew that if we told the truth, they wouldn't buy us and would send us back to the old compound. Returning to the old compound would result in horrible consequences. Then I told her, the only reason we came here was to make money and support our family, so why would we want to escape? She then trusted us, and the company spent 10,000 USD to buy each of us from the old company.
In the first few days, we used our old techniques to find people. Then, they introduced us to 'Google Voice' and gave us 500 numbers to send messages to every day. We didn't know how they got those numbers, but when we searched them on Google, we found that they were USA and Canadian numbers. They also provided a script for chatting with clients, which was realistic and well-organised. They received a lot of investments because their chat script was so good. We noticed that almost every client invested money there, which was completely different from other companies we had worked for. The trading platform they used was also very realistic. Their main trading platform was a cloned Metatrader-5 (MT-5) trading platform, and they also used another app called Bitdu (which is still available on the Play Store and App Store).
I found a few potential people to target. Two of them were ready to invest large amounts. One was a Canadian man around 65 years old, and the other was a German around 55 years old. But I stopped asking the German man to invest because I found he was a great person. He wanted my friendship and he had his wife and 2 dogs in his family and he told me after he passed away his property would go to a charity. So I really didn’t want to steal his money. In that company, we used a photo of a beautiful model who always stayed in the office and talked with clients over video calls, which made it easy to scam people. My two clients were prepared to invest but, luckily, after two months of trying, GASO rescued me, my friend and a Nepali boy from the compound on 4 September 2022.
Being a survivor leader to stop human trafficking
After five months and nine days of a horrible experience, on 9 September 2022, we returned to Bangladesh after receiving lots of support from different groups. It was emotional to see my family again despite carrying physical pain because of the treatment in Cambodia. In addition, even though earning money was the main goal of going to Cambodia, I came back with an empty pocket and still had the initial debt that needed to pay back.
Now, I work at HRC as Survivor Empowerment and Communication Officer, for the mission of stopping human trafficking. Through my lived experience, I was able to contribute intelligence to law enforcement units and connect to other survivors of human trafficking.
I am extremely grateful to all those who helped and supported me over the years. As a survivor of human trafficking and cyber slavery, I dream of a world free of slavery, where everyone has their independence and can live their lives with dignity.