Every fraudulent call, every romance scam message, every fake investment pitch – they’re not just crimes against banking customers. They’re also crimes committed by victims. Behind the industrialized fraud operations stealing billions annually stands an even darker reality: hundreds of thousands of people trafficked, enslaved and forced to execute scams under threat of torture and death.
In our previous articles, we revealed the scale of modern fraud syndicates and how they operate like Fortune 500 companies, complete with HR departments, R&D units and AI-powered tools. But every corporate structure needs workers. And in the world of industrial fraud, that workforce is built on human trafficking.
This is the story banks rarely see: the people on the other end of the phone line, typing those convincing messages, executing those sophisticated social engineering attacks. Understanding this human dimension isn’t just about empathy, it’s critical intelligence for institutions fighting fraud. Because when you understand how these operations recruit, train and control their workforce, you understand their vulnerabilities.
From victims to recruits: How fraud gangs build their workforce
Conservative estimates suggest over 300,000 people are trapped in scam operations across Southeast Asia alone. Fraud syndicates acquire their workforce through a pipeline of deception, trafficking and violence. This isn’t a side effect of the industry. It’s the foundation it’s built on.
Deceived, trafficked and enslaved
Most workers are trafficked via fake job ads promising well-paid remote work in hotel-like settings or lured through romance and travel promises. Targets are typically migrants, minorities or people from poorer regions seeking opportunity. Once they arrive, their passports are confiscated and they are surveilled constantly, denied movement and forced to work under threat of violence. In Southeast Asia, the amount of people enslaved is so high that the United Nations has called this a “human rights crisis”. Despite ongoing rescue efforts, INTERPOL estimates hundreds of thousands remain enslaved with victims trafficked from Vietnam, Bangladesh, Kenya, India and beyond. In 2025, a single compound in Myanmar held over 250 victims from 20 countries.
Academies of deception
When new recruits arrive, they are not thrown in blind. They undergo structured onboarding, much like legitimate employees. They are taught scripts for romance scams, fake investment pitches and impersonation scenarios. They are also trained to handle objections of their victims and how to successfully extract their money.
In compounds, novices are approached as if in a training academy. This means that they are subjected to monitored practice or role-play exercises with their supervisors providing real-time feedback to help with speedy onboarding. Larger compounds even create promotion pathways: starting as trainees, moving on to “closers” and eventually to trainers or money-laundering coordinators – using, once again, the same techniques leveraged by legitimate (tele)sales operations.
Motivation by fear and reward
Performance is tracked with daily quotas and KPIs. Supervisors measure key performance metrics, such as number of successful conversions, total value extracted per operator, average call time and lead conversion rates. Workers who meet targets receive small bonuses. Those who fail face punishment, like severe violence.
Breaking the cycle: Why banks must act
The human trafficking pipeline fuelling fraud operations reveals a critical vulnerability: these syndicates depend on enslaved workers executing scams at scale. When law enforcement rescues victims, when borders tighten, when recruitment networks are disrupted, the fraud machine stalls. But banks don’t have to wait for that. They are on the front line – and they have the tools to fight back.
Protecting customers from scam factory attacks
The first line of defence is recognising that scam factory workers are highly trained. They follow scripts, handle objections and adapt in real time. Defeating them requires more than customer education. It requires banks to build friction into the moments that matter most.
Transaction monitoring systems can flag the behavioural signatures of social engineering in progress: unusual payment destinations, out-of-pattern transfer amounts, customers acting with uncharacteristic urgency. Real-time intervention like a call, a pop-up prompt or a temporary hold can break the spell a scam operator has cast before funds leave the account.
Identity verification as a fraud prevention layer
Scam factories rely on impersonation. Operators pose as bank staff, government officials, investment advisors and romantic partners. Robust identity verification at key moments – account opening, beneficiary additions, large transfers – adds a layer of friction that scripted operators cannot easily overcome.
Agent-led video identification is particularly powerful here. Trained specialists can engage customers in real conversation, detect signs of coercion or distress, and identify whether the person initiating a transaction is acting of their own free will. Combining these human insights with biometric authentication, document verification, liveness checks and cross-channel fraud signals creates a defence-in-depth approach that is far harder to script around.
Intelligence sharing and systemic disruption
No bank sees the full picture alone. Scam factories rotate their tactics, phone numbers, spoofed identities and impersonation targets across institutions. When banks actively share fraud intelligence with each other and with law enforcement, patterns emerge that no single institution could detect in isolation.
Banks that report suspected scam activity – including specific scripts, spoofed numbers and behavioural indicators – contribute to the disruption of the trafficking networks fuelling billion-dollar fraud empires. Financial institutions are not passive targets. They are active nodes in a global counter-fraud network, and the intelligence they hold is invaluable.
Want to read more on this topic? Explore:
The True Face of Fraud #1: The masterminds behind the $1 trillion crime industry. Uncover who is behind the fastest-growing fraud schemes, where the main scam compound hubs are located, and what financial organisations need to understand about the threat actors they are up against.
The True Face of Fraud #2: The Industrialisation of Crime – How crime syndicates run $1 trillion scam empires. Discover how criminal networks are structuring themselves as fully-fledged enterprises, leveraging AI and the Fraud-as-a-Service (FaaS) model to industrialise fraud at scale.
By
Nikita Rybová
Customer & Product Marketing Manager at IDnow
Connect with Nikita on LinkedIn
