Cyber scam hubs across Southeast Asia fuelled by human trafficking: APG report
On the lookout for lucrative jobs abroad, Abhishek Negi and Ashish Tyagi approached a former colleague who offered to help them land a job with
On the lookout for lucrative jobs abroad, Abhishek Negi and Ashish Tyagi approached a former colleague who offered to help them land a job with a Chinese company in Thailand, with a salary of about $1,000 a month plus incentives. Unaware of what lay ahead, Abhishek also brought along his cousin Gaurav Bisht. They were later persuaded to join a company in Myanmar. In March 2024, they took a flight from Delhi, and midway through their journey, they were warned by a fellow passenger that their destination, Myawaddy, was a “shady place.” At Yangon airport, unknown individuals were waiting to take them to the company’s location. Growing suspicious, the three contacted the Indian Embassy instead, which arranged their deportation back to India, as per a CBI case registered in August 2024. Not everyone was so fortunate. Hundreds of Indian citizens never made it out in time. They were trapped and enslaved inside cyber scam hubs, particularly in Cambodia, Myanmar and Lao PDR. Responding to a Rajya Sabha query in February 2026, the government said that 6,998 Indians had been rescued from such centres since 2022— 2,533 from Cambodia, 2,297 from Lao PDR, and 2,168 from Myanmar. The Investigation Agency (NIA), Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), and Enforcement Directorate (ED) have been probing multiple cases involving human trafficking agents across several States, who were part of networks through which Indian nationals were sent to “cyber slavery” compounds.
Many accused have been arrested and charge-sheeted. Southeast Asia as hub The menace of cyber scam hubs across Southeast Asian countries has been examined in the Asia/Pacific Group (APG) Yearly Typologies Report 2025. The report noted that Southeast Asia has become a “hub for online fraud operations”, generating tens of billions of dollars annually. Started in early 2025, and co-led by Indonesia and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the study revealed that the cyber scam hubs impose debt obligations on trafficked individuals, covering costs such as transportation, accommodation and subsistence, which victims are coerced to repay over time. In many cases, victims or their families are forced to pay between $3,000 to $20,000 to secure their release. Some victims are coerced into luring in others to secure their release. “Victims are compelled to participate in scams, defrauding unsuspecting individuals worldwide, thereby generating direct income for the perpetrators,” said the report. Another source of earning for these syndicates is to again target their victims by posing as agents capable of recovering stolen funds for a fee. Physical abuse Many of these compounds are concentrated in border regions and special economic zones (SEZs), where trafficked individuals working for the cybercrime syndicates are kept in confinement and subjected to physical violence, ranging from beatings with batons and electric shocks to food deprivation and forced drug use.
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