GENEVA (AP) \u2014 The U.N.’s migration agency is warning that criminal networks have been trafficking hundreds of thousands of people \u2014 many of them educated English speakers \u2014 to work in online scam centers, and the caseload is growing. <\/p>\n
The International Organization for Migration says victims are often lured by fake job advertisements \u2014 mostly through social media \u2014 promising work abroad, only to get locked up, have their identity documents seized, and forced through violence, threats and \u201cdebt bondage\u201d to participate in the online scams. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re seeing so many more of these cases emerge right now,” IOM Director-General Amy Pope told reporters in Geneva on Tuesday. \u201cWe\u2019re seeing victims from over 80 different countries being trafficked into the scams.\u201d<\/p>\n
‘They\u2019re recruiting people who often speak English very well, who often have graduate degrees, some level of education,” Pope said, adding that the cases are \u201cspecifically playing out across Asia.\u201d<\/p>\n
The migration agency cited estimates from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime that losses across east Asia, Australia, and New Zealand reached as much as $114 billion last year, and \u201cscam compounds\u201d across the region could hold hundreds of thousands of trafficked workers.<\/p>\n
IOM said it had assisted over 3,500 such victims of forced criminality between 2022 and 2025, people who originated from nearly 40 countries: people from Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Bangladesh were most affected. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"GENEVA (AP) \u2014 The U.N.’s migration agency is warning that criminal networks have been trafficking hundreds of thousands…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":109616,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[7],"tags":[23636,2898,2900,2897,65],"class_list":["post-109615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-geneva","tag-ap-business","tag-ap-politics","tag-ap-world-news","tag-associated-press","tag-geneva"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/117004484311015283","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109615\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}