From chat to cheat: Inside the Southeast Asia–US romance fraud machine

INTERNATIONAL: From American victims to Southeast Asian scam hubs, a hidden criminal empire thrives on lies, labour trafficking, and human suffering.

Love, lies, and loss: Victims on both sides of the screen

In the United States, Sarah thought she had found love through a religious dating site. Instead, she was pulled into a devastating online romance scam, manipulated over months into handing over US$100,000 (S$128,145) to a man who never truly existed. She is one of countless victims across the world — deceived, emotionally exploited, and financially ruined.

Thousands of miles away, “Sara” — a pseudonym for a South African woman — found herself entangled in the same fraudulent machinery, but from the other end. After losing her tutoring job during the COVID-19 pandemic, she was lured by a Facebook ad promising a customer service position in Thailand. Rather, she was trafficked at gunpoint to a syndicate inside a compound in Myanmar. There, she was compelled to portray an affluent Asian female residing in California who targets unaccompanied and lonely Americans.

Trained to memorise minute details of Californian life and even appear as someone else on video calls, Sara was tasked with initiating fake online relationships and eventually extracting money. “You stop forgetting your own life,” she recounted on The Economist’s Scam Inc podcast. Despite being under constant surveillance, she tried subtly to warn her targets, embedding cautionary hints within scripted conversations.

Scam factories: The industrialisation of fraud

Sara was one of an estimated 200,000 individuals cornered and “imprisoned” inside industrial-scale scam complexes built all around Southeast Asia — primarily in the Philippines, Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia. These hubs of criminal activities, frequently housed in uninhabited gambling dens or resorts, are manned by structured crime mobs exploiting the economic consequences of the pandemic.

Based on UN Office on Drugs and Crime data, the scam industry now yields almost US$40 billion annually. The conditions inside these compounds are often brutal: Workers may be shackled, tortured, and even forced to assault each other. Children have been among the victims.

In many cases, those running the scams are not working voluntarily. People are routinely lured via job ads promising high-paying tech or customer service roles abroad, only to be abducted and coerced into participating in online fraud.

Some governments have stepped up their enforcement methods. However, the challenge is vast. Civil struggle in Myanmar makes rescue operations difficult. Most of the countries, except for the Philippines, are reluctant to even admit the existence of these problems.

Meanwhile, the US has stepped back from a leadership role in dealing with the crisis. With millions lost and thousands of lives shattered, experts warn — without stronger global action, the scam industry will only continue to grow, morph, and spread.