Escaping Scam City | Stars, Stripes & Scams | 6 (FINAL)

Micah is finally free, but Ava is still trapped. When dramatically she does get released, instead of finding a joyful reunion, she’s handcuffed and charged as a criminal. Both Micah and Ava realize that though they’ve escaped Sihanoukville, there’s a long journey ahead to rebuilding their lives.

PLUS: What’s the connection between recent U.S. funding cuts, Chinese crime syndicates, and your bank account? And with hundreds of thousands of people still trapped in scam compounds, what can you, the listener, do to help?

Show website: fightofmylifepodcast.com

Transcript

Speaker 1:

Cadence Productions. Unheard.

Kaibo, Day 54.

Rich Thompson:

Micah stands just inside the main gate at Kaibo, the armed guards in a line behind him. Is he about to be released, beaten, worse? He holds his breath. And then, the gate opens. One of the guards pushes him out onto the street. He tells Micah to wait. He says a policeman will be coming soon.

That's all he said.

Micah:

That's all.

Corinne Powell:

That's all he said.

Micah:

That's all.

Rich Thompson:

The guard goes back inside and the gate closes behind him. Micah waits in the blazing sun for 10 minutes, then 20, then 30. It's a situation that's as terrifying as it is absurd.

Half an hour.

Micah:

Yeah.

Rich Thompson:

Yeah.

Micah:

Half hour, the luggage.

Rich Thompson:

Yeah.

Micah:

The bag.

Rich Thompson:

Yeah.

Corinne Powell:

Yeah.

Micah:

The sun.

Rich Thompson:

At last, the car pulls up. It's an unmarked Toyota Corolla Prius, and the driver is in plain clothes.

He beckons Micah over.

Micah:

He gave me the photo like this, the photo of passport me. "You?"

Rich Thompson:

Oh.

Micah:

"You, you? Oh, okay. [foreign language 00:01:41]. You go, go, come, come, come."

Rich Thompson:

Jeez.

Micah has no idea if he can trust this man, but he has no choice. He cannot turn back and return to Kaibo, he has no money or means of other transport in Cambodia. With his phone wiped, he can't even make a call. And so he gets in the unmarked car. As they pull away from Kaibo, Micah doesn't know what to think. Is he really free for good, or is it just another trick? Micah is driven to the Sihanoukville police station

Micah:

And then took the statement, just like, "Your passport, name, and you came here one day and you've been cheated, right? Okay." Finish. The statement, finish. Simple as that.

Rich Thompson:

Wow.

Micah:

Yeah.

Rich Thompson:

And did you feel safe at the police station?

Micah:

No.

Rich Thompson:

No, not yet?

Micah:

No, no.

Rich Thompson:

Okay.

Micah:

Because before I came out, the boss at the Chinatown, he had threatened me.

Rich Thompson:

Micah remembers the boss's last words.

Micah:

He said, "Once you go to the police station, I might be get you come back here."

Rich Thompson:

Oh.

Micah:

He said that I might be, he said, "So you don't be [foreign language 00:03:12]."

Corinne Powell:

"Don't be happy too early."

Micah:

Yeah.

Rich Thompson:

Micah is told he needs to wait for someone to come down and pick him up. But it can't happen immediately. He will need to stay the night there. The station has only basic facilities, so Micah sleeps outside in the yard, in a hammock. But he can't sleep, not really.

Micah:

I can't sleep, really cannot sleep. One hour, two hour, wake up. I really scared I've been taken back by the scam compound again.

Rich Thompson:

But at last, when morning arrives, so does his ride out of Sihanoukville. Micah is beyond relieved to climb into the car and finally meet face-to-face, the person he'd spent weeks messaging with. This man, the contact Jake had referred him to, someone we need to keep anonymous, had spent the past fortnight making quiet calls, brokering conversations, speaking with embassies and navigating back channels. And finally, Micah's release had been secured. As Sihanoukville fades in the rear view mirror, Micah closes his eyes in relief. He still can't quite believe it's real. Just finding someone like Jake had felt impossible, like searching for a needle in a haystack. Reaching out to a complete stranger, hoping for anything at all, it was the thinnest thread of hope, but somehow that thread held. He was out.

And his first request.

Jake:

One of the first things he said to them was, "I really want to meet Jake." And I was like, "Oh, that's amazing. Yeah, I'd love to meet him. Where are you?" And he's like, "Well, we're seven hours away." And I was about to fly out of the country.

Rich Thompson:

Jake is scheduled to fly to the United States that evening, but he doesn't want to miss the chance to meet Micah. They arranged to meet at a spot halfway between them, that is also on the way to the airport. The place they chose, a Pizza Hut.

And what was it like meeting at Pizza Hut? Can you describe that, when you got to meet him face-to-face, what did you guys?

Micah:

I didn't think like the person, I just think the food, because long time already, I didn't eat as much as delicious that that was. Long time already. Really.

Rich Thompson:

But eventually, after the pizza, they start to talk. And Micah's emotions, which he has pushed down for months of captivity, are finally released.

Micah:

Oh, my eyes was, "Thank you really, Mr. J, really."

Jake:

Yeah. I just felt like I was doing my job, but I was really struck by the level of personal gratefulness he felt. And also just by the, I had this like deep sense of relief in this case that, a lot of times you're just dealing with these cases day in and day out, and sometimes I would never interact with the person. And it really regrounded me and almost in like a permanent way, regrounded me to this reality that every single one of these people are people with their own story and their own humanity, that all deserve justice and they all deserve to live a flourishing life.

I mean, in one sense it was a unique interaction, because we were in this very weird sort of relationship where he had begged me for help on social media. And then somehow my Twitter account helped save his life in a small way. But in another sense, when I met him, kind of became more like this is a person and a friend that I care about.

Rich Thompson:

Micah has escaped Sihanoukville. He's free and he's safe, but he isn't the same person he was five months ago.

Micah:

[foreign language 00:08:00].

Corinne Powell:

"I don't know how to feel, I don't. Is it a sad thing or what is it? Because if not for this thing, I wouldn't be sitting here talking to all of you."

It's all right.

Micah:

Bad memory.

Dara:

Yeah. [inaudible 00:08:33].

Corinne Powell:

[foreign language 00:08:34]

Rich Thompson:

And of course, while Micah is out, Ava is still a prisoner.

Jake:

I mean, he was really concerned about the situation his girlfriend was still in.

Rich Thompson:

Micah texts Ava to tell her that he's escaped.

Ava:

[foreign language 00:08:57].

Corinne Powell:

"And he texted me and told me that I'll help you out too, don't be afraid. And I believed him when he told me that he would get me out, because he has this confidence in him that when he said something, he would do it and he would keep his word. So I was hopeful."

Rich Thompson:

We left Sihanoukville in the morning, driving back to Penampen, in a grey drizzle. Before we headed to the airport to fly home, we made one last stop. On the outskirts of Penampen, we pulled over to visit the Pizza Hut where Jake and Micah met.

We've made it here to the corner to Pizza Hut. I mean, I don't know what I expected, but it looks like Pizza Hut.

On the way out, I snapped a photo of a sign that read, "Where the love gets baked in."

Dara:

Thank you.

Rich Thompson:

Where the love gets baked in.

Dara:

Yes.

Rich Thompson:

Beautiful. [foreign language 00:10:12].

I sent it to Micah, just a little nod to let him know we'd been there. I thought he'd get a kick out of it, but he messaged back, "It's actually the wrong Pizza Hut."

Even still, there's something about that quiet meeting between Jake and Micah, a meeting the rest of the world had no idea what was happening, that gives me hope. It's a reminder against the backdrop of so much deceit and exploitation, of shared humanity, of the good that still exists in people. One person thrown into the fight of his life, another willing to step into it with him. But of course, stories like Micah's are still the exception, not the rule. Hundreds of thousands of people are still trapped in compounds in Cambodia and all across the world. And the recruitment of new scammers is, by all reports, only expanding and it's getting closer to home.

Jason:

Recruiting people from Western countries who might have the knowledge and understanding to scam people effectively in those countries, particularly with countries that maybe have not been tapped very much yet, that have different language aspects or dimensions. That, I think is something you're going to continue to see, seeing more people from developing countries. And my expectation is that there is going to be a continued effort to try to recruit more people from those countries, because that's where the growth market is. So you need to get access to labour and people who understand the context in those countries, to be able to effectively scam there.

Rich Thompson:

As my flight took off back to Sydney, I reached out to Amir to check in with him. This time I told him quite plainly that I was worried that he might've been scammed and to let me know if I could reach out to someone on his behalf. And sure enough, the first few messages I received back from him seemed to confirm those fears. He was being made to scam people.

Speaker 9:

Tianchuang Hotel, Day 67.

Rich Thompson:

Ava wakes to a message from Micah, the police are coming today. Since his release, he's been doing everything he can to get her out, pushing, agitating, working every angle. It's consumed his every waking thought. He's hinted that things were moving, but now, unbelievably, the day is here.

Ava:

So when Micah told me that the police were coming in, I already packed my stuff, I was ready to leave.

Rich Thompson:

The workers sit in the main room, but everyone is distracted, waiting. And then, at last, the elevator chimes.

Ava:

So when the elevator came up, ding, and we saw there were 10 policemen and they said, "Don't be afraid, don't run, we're here to help you." They took us downstairs and took photos. And I was very alert and hopeful, so I went to the Cambodian policeman and asked him, "Are you taking us home?" And these policemen, they could speak a bit of Thai and they'd say, "Yes, I'll take you home."

Rich Thompson:

But first, the policemen take Ava and the other workers to Sihanoukville Police station, the same place Micah was taken just a few months before. And now, all of a sudden, the mood changes, there is a different policeman at the station.

Ava:

And I knew he wasn't a good policeman, because he was talking to me in very crude language.

Rich Thompson:

The freed workers are then told to sign papers that they don't understand.

Ava:

We had no choice, so we signed the papers.

Rich Thompson:

It's not until later that she learns what they said. Ava asks the policeman when she can go home. She wants to see Micah, she wants to see her children. But instead she's taken to a hotel in Phnom Penh.

Ava:

And then they said to process the papers for you to return to Thailand, it'll take three to four days. But that was a lie, I stayed there for a month.

Rich Thompson:

A month under close supervision. They're not allowed to leave the hotel. At last, the Thai consulate arranges for their transport back to Thailand.

Ava:

And when the people from the Consulate came, they said that, "You're about to go home. Don't do anything bad again, don't come back."

Rich Thompson:

This statement, "Don't do anything bad again," is confusing to Ava, but she brushes it off. She just wants to go home. And so, on July 29, 2022, 214 days after crossing the border on foot, Ava boards a bus with her co-workers for the long seven-hour drive to Sa Kaeo, a small Thai town just across the border. After everything she's endured, Ava is finally crossing back. She's going home. Ava gets word to Micah and he arranges to meet her there. Micah arrives early, giddy at the thought of Ava being released, but that's not what happens.

Ava:

And when we went to Sa Kaeo, that was when we saw many policemen and reporters at the border.

Rich Thompson:

The moment they exit the van, reporters swarm around Ava and the other freed workers, taking photographs and shouting questions. "How does it feel to be a scammer? Why did you commit these crimes?" It takes Ava a second to realise they're talking about her. They think she's a criminal. They think she knowingly went into the scam compound, that it was her choice. She looks for Micah in the chaos, and at last, she sees him. He's far away, trying to push his way towards her. There are too many people in between them, all of them shouting, hurling accusations. A flash goes off in her face, when her vision clears, a policeman pulls her arms behind her back and handcuffs her with cable ties. She isn't going home yet, instead, she's taken to jail.

Ava:

And that's when I first met Micah, in the jail room. It's like the movies, he's far away from me, and then I am in this room and I had to yell and tell him that I can't be out.

Rich Thompson:

And it's here that Micah and Ava come to a crushing realisation, her fight for freedom is far from over.

As I am sure you can imagine, for those who have lost money to pig butchering scams, the journey doesn't end when the messages stop, when the money is gone. The road back is long, sometimes, painfully so.

Speaker 10:

And it's very much every day, it's just like this weight that sits in you, that lives in you. It's not like I went searching for it, it would just well up in me every day. So while I'm trying to do my work, something may come up. So I'm like, I got to feel it, I got to cry right now, I got to maybe write something down right now about how this is feeling. I'm going to take a walk, I'm going to meditate. I got to make space for me to just really feel this, because that's really where I was at. And as hard as that is, that's better than pushing it away.

Rich Thompson:

In researching this podcast, we also spoke to another man, a victim who lost over a million dollars to a pig butchering scam, everything he had and more. The devastation was so overwhelming, he couldn't even speak to us. He was in hospital battling acute depression and suicidal thoughts. But here's the thing that is so often forgotten, the long tail of devastation runs just as deep on the other side. Micah and Ava had made it out of Sihanoukville, but that didn't mean the fight was over. For Micah, the path forward was at least a little clearer, the Malaysian government recognised him as a victim of human trafficking, not a criminal. But Ava's case was much more complicated.

Jake:

And so he went back with no legal jeopardy, so that's the happy ending. But she had a mixed classification by the Thai government. One government agency classified her as a victim, the other one said that she was a criminal. And that sort of complex dynamic has landed her in sort of legal limbo and legal jeopardy for years now. And so as I stayed in touch with him, I sort of realised that her story, the acute violence that she was at risk from, had ended, which was a relief of course, but that the sort of second part was sort of just beginning.

Rich Thompson:

And here, we arrive at one of the biggest challenges, facing not just those who managed to escape compounds, but also the governments tasked with bringing them home. How should the law treat them? Are they criminals or victims? There's a whole lot of grey in this. How do they prove that the criminal behaviour they were made to do was against their will? How do they prove that they didn't know what they were getting into and that they wanted to leave? They scammed people out of their money, what level of responsibility do they hold for that? What do you think? You've heard Ava and Micah's story, but maybe you are still a little unsure, maybe you're thinking, "Come on, if someone scams people, they should be punished." Maybe you're thinking, "Nothing could ever make me do something like that." Take a listen to Jason as he unpacks this.

Jason:

So I just finished going through an interview transcript with an individual who was actually in prison in China. He was tricked into Northern Myanmar and upon arriving in Kokang, he was put into a cage with a wild dog as part of his grooming process. This individual is still suffering from the injuries of being put into that cage with the dog. But that was one of the tactics that was used to get this individual to become a willing scammer. If he messed up, if he didn't hit his target, if he was using a online social media account and that account was blocked by the provider, he was held responsible for that and the punishment would be, locked in the cage with the dog.

One thing to recognise about the online scam syndicates is, they have a whole playbook with regard to how to establish psychological control over someone. And so just like they're doing this with the scamming victims, they seek to establish psychological control through that grooming process, they're doing the same thing with the scammers. They're bringing them in and they're using all sorts of psychological tactics and pressure, including physical torture, but psychological torture, coercion, manipulation, to get them to become hardened scammers and to get them to throw out all of their values. Anything that might prevent them from being a good scammer, they want to break that down and they want to turn these people into scam machines.

Rich Thompson:

It's been a year since I met Amir at that airport in Phnom Penh. And I've stayed in touch, we message every week or so. In those early days, his messages hinted that something wasn't right, the job he'd landed in wasn't what he expected. He never said outright that he was in a scamming centre, but the clues were definitely there, long hours, poor conditions, he said things were unsafe. He'd ask me to pray for him, specifically that he would reach his work goals. He sent lots of broken heart emojis. And whenever I tried to ask direct questions, or offer to connect him with someone who could help, he'd go silent, change the subject, every time. I assumed his phone was being monitored, that he was deleting my messages.

But a few months in, he posted a video to his WhatsApp status, it was him counting a wad of US dollars spread out on his bed. This one definitely made me pause. We'd heard that some workers were buying their freedom by recruiting others into the job. Was that what was happening? A few months later, he messaged me with good news, he was getting out, going home. I was relieved for him. But then came the second message, it was just a visit. He wouldn't be staying home for long, because he'd landed a new job in Dubai. My heart sank. Dubai has increasingly appeared in reports as one of the growing hubs for scam compounds. It's not hard to imagine that he'd been referred there. I asked what kind of work he'd been doing, but no answer, just another subject change.

When he arrived, he told me he was working hard, seven days a week, 8 A.M. to 10 P.M. But again, no mention of what the work actually was. Late one night, perhaps in a moment of vulnerability, he wrote this to me, "I have lost a lot of myself this time. But I have no choice, I'm the only breadwinner in my family." A few weeks ago, I tried one last time to see if I could get the truth from him. I wrote, "Amir, I'd really like to talk to you about your experience in Cambodia. What happened to you?" And this time, he blocked me. He was clearly tricked and exploited at the beginning and who knows what he endured in Cambodia. Yet at some point it appears he's turned, he appears to be there willingly now, maybe even recruiting others in. So, is he a victim or a criminal?

I want to pause here one last time to dig a little bit deeper into this. Because this isn't just an academic question, it has real massive consequences for people like Ava. I spoke with Jason about all of this and he helped me to see that asking, are they victims or criminals is actually the wrong way to think about it altogether.

Jason:

Even if the person committed crimes, you can be both responsible for criminal activity at the same time as being a victim of human trafficking. It's not really an either/or.

Rich Thompson:

You see, there's an internationally accepted definition of human trafficking, and it goes like this, "The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of people through force, fraud or deception, with the aim of exploiting them for profit." Now you think about the path of someone like Amir or Ava, recruited through fake job ads, transported across borders to countries like Cambodia or Myanmar, harboured in terrifying locked down compounds. And all of it done through force, fraud and deception, and all for the profit of the recruiters. By the international standard, this is most certainly human trafficking, plain and simple. Yet in practise, there's a really wide range of outcomes for people who escape these scam compounds, depending on how and where they go home. Now, sometimes they're recognised as trafficking victims and offered help. But in many, many other cases, they're treated as criminals, forced to bear, not only the violence they've endured, but also the weight of severe legal consequences.

Speaker 9:

Thailand, March 2025.

Rich Thompson:

The bus rumbles down the country road and turns onto the highway that leads to Bangkok. Ava rests her head against the window and looks out across the dark fields. There'll be very few lights until she gets closer to the capital. It's hard not to compare this bus ride to the one she took just over three years ago, when she set out from her village to the Cambodian border, filled with hope for the future. Today, she might be free from the scam compound, but nothing else has worked out the way she once dreamed. She thinks back to that night she first returned to Thailand, to the chaos of reporters and law enforcement. And she remembers the soft-spoken policeman who first explained her situation.

Ava:

And he'd be the one telling me, "Oh, don't cry. If you have money, someone can bail you out. But you guys have committed a crime, so just be calm and wait till you get bailed out and you can fight the case in court."

Rich Thompson:

It had taken Micah three days to raise the money.

Ava:

But it wasn't just getting the money, there was a whole process for them to get me out. In those three days, Micah said he didn't sleep at all, he basically was really stressed and trying to get me out as soon as possible.

Rich Thompson:

Ava arrives in Bangkok just after 3 A.M. and makes her way to a hostel near the courthouse. She snatches a few hours of sleep, then gets ready for her 9 A.M. hearing. By now, it's a familiar routine. Since she escaped Sihanoukville in June of 2022, she's made this journey nearly 20 times.

Ava:

And by the time the court opened, I'd be there from 9 A.M. to 4 P.M. And after the case, I would get back about 3:30 A.M. the next day. So it was a whole day, every time there was a court hearing.

Rich Thompson:

The case has been delayed over and over again. And each time Ava has tried to explain in court that she was lied to and tricked and abused, nobody seems to care. She can tell that they see her as a scammer and a criminal, not a victim. It's the kind of ordeal that's common to so many people in Ava's situation.

Amy Miller:

I think there's this really difficult misnomer in this category of trafficking that makes it really difficult for people to grab hold of the true victim status of these people. Because there's a lot of anger and frustration around the world if people are scamming them out of their millions of dollars and I completely understand. But I think sometimes governments assume our people are going there intentionally, they know what they're doing, they want to scam. So then there's a lack of compassion or a lack of motivation to want to help them.

Rich Thompson:

That's Amy Miller, the head of a non-profit that helps survivors who managed to escape compounds along the Thai-Myanmar border. Back when Micah first reached out to Jake, it was a rare occurrence for NGO workers to be in direct contact with those on the inside. But today, a handful of NGO workers, Amy being one of them, are contacted directly on a daily basis.

Amy Miller:

Where we sit, is often we're helping those that really are destitute and really have no other option and really have been through some very extreme brutal circumstances. And so it's hard for us to have governments sometimes, that respond, "Oh, they're just scammers," when you're hearing their story. And they've been lied to, tricked and abused for months and months.

Rich Thompson:

For Ava, as hurtful as this is, a part of her isn't surprised. Why should the judges, who are strangers, believe her, when her own neighbours, people she is known for much of her life, don't?

Ava:

In the village, they don't really believe what I say, and they don't want to hear what I say, because they see it in the news and they think I'm a scammer. They just point at me and says, "Oh, yeah, this is the one that was working at the call centre." And when I try to explain to them, they don't hear me and they don't listen to me and they don't believe in me. So it makes me think, was it really my fault that I went there? And I just feel like I'm drowned in these accusations all the time.

Rich Thompson:

Today's court appearance feels different. A new panel of judges has been appointed. Ava sits among a line of accused, scammers waiting her turn. When she's called to the stand, she rises. She speaks clearly and truthfully.

Ava:

I got really scared, but then I just told the truth. I just said the truth to all the things that were asked of me.

Rich Thompson:

She presents the evidence, messages sent and received, fake job ads, desperate cries for help. She speaks of the papers she was forced to sign in Sihanoukville.

Ava:

It was a consent to be charged.

Rich Thompson:

This time, the judges seemed to listen. This time, they seemed to understand.

Ava:

These judges were nicer and they actually believed that we were scammed.

Rich Thompson:

But because the prosecutor didn't show up, the judges can't make a decision today. They adjourn the case again. Ava's next court date is scheduled for late June, 2025. She's hopeful that on that day there will be a verdict. And of course, while she wants to be found not guilty, she just wants the trial to end.

Ava:

If I get in jail, at least there's an end date. But this is just going on forever, I don't even know when it's going to end.

Rich Thompson:

Exhausted, Ava heads to the station where she waits for the bus that will take her on the eight-hour journey back home. Each trip costs money that she doesn't have. She's not allowed to work while there are charges against her, and so she has to rely on Micah to support her and her children.

Amy Miller:

These people are often sent back to their homes and there's very little resource, very little aftercare. Very few people understand this form of trauma and there's a lot of shame and there's a lot of cultural stigma around scammers and around what you did. And so we'll keep in contact with some of them, through the months and years since they're home and we'll get calls out for, "Please, I need some..." They need financial help, they need jobs and all of that, that relates more the... Got one the other day, "I'm in bed, I can't get out of bed, I'm so depressed, I need to be hospitalised, I need something," just because the trauma is so significant.

Rich Thompson:

As the bus leaves Bangkok station on the eight-hour overnight journey home, Ava messages Micah to let him know she's on her way. He replies with a thumbs up and then sends her some pictures of the day, him playing with the kids. Both her sons are close to Micah, biking and swimming with him after school and on weekends and turning to him for advice. Ava doesn't take her relationship with Micah for granted.

Ava:

We've been through a lot together, but he's someone that, he's been supportive throughout everything. He's been supportive of me, of my family, and we've been through horrible things together. And I think that's made us more supportive of one another.

Rich Thompson:

And so, two years ago when Micah asked Ava to take the next step, she didn't hesitate.

Ava:

We got married, we got registered about two years ago.

Rich Thompson:

"Get some sleep," Micah messages her. He sends her the same yawning cat meme he'd sent her years ago. And just as she did then, she starts to laugh. It still amazes Ava, despite the struggle she's endured and the ongoing criminal case, that she has found love, real love.

Corinne Powell:

[foreign language 00:36:19].

Ava:

We come from different worlds, I feel like my life is imperfect. I am from a poor family, I didn't finish studying, I have children, and then my grandma passed. I come from a very troubled background, but he's willing to stand by me and he makes me laugh. And yeah, he's really what makes me happy.

Rich Thompson:

They may not know what lies ahead, but they do know that they will face it together.

It's been almost a year since I travelled to Sihanoukville, and in that time, the time it took to make this podcast, every member of my team, and keep in mind, we live in different countries and are different nationalities, continued to receive scam text messages at least once a month.

Erin:

When I lecture about this, and I'll be like, "Who's here to pig butchering?" And progressively now, more and more people have, but it used to be, I'd talk to a big ballroom and they'd be like, maybe, I don't know, five, 10 people in the ballroom, have heard of it. And I'd be like, "Well, who's gotten this text on their phone?" And everyone has, and that speaks to the ubiquitousness of this as well, is that like, what kind of operation are you running that you can hit everyone in the United States multiple times? Like how do you scale that big?

Rich Thompson:

The scammers target more and more people, the dollar amount lost, keeps increasing. Not only are they stealing more money, they're becoming smarter, running new and more sophisticated scams each day.

Erin:

It feels like every time we figure something out, they pivot. They're always ahead of us, they're ahead of us every step, and we're trying to catch up. And when we finally get there, they've jumped two steps ahead.

Rich Thompson:

And these scam compounds are appearing in new geographies.

Jason:

The other phenomenon is, you have other crime groups that are copying the methodology. So there are Vietnamese crime groups, there are Cambodian crime groups, there are Nigerian crime groups, there's the group in Georgia. They're adopting the same pig butchering methodology to do scams, recognising what a large illicit market this is, that's largely untapped and pivoting quite rapidly into that market.

Rich Thompson:

Even as scams spread across the world, like some kind of fast-growing malignant cancer, in places like Cambodia, it seems that there are fewer and fewer voices remaining, to speak out against them. July of 2022, Jake, after appearing on an Al Jazeera documentary about the four scamming crisis in Cambodia, was prevented from returning to Cambodia by his organisation, out of fears for his safety. There were, "Credible warnings about various potential threats."

In September of 2024, Dara, the Cambodian journalist who had accompanied us to Sihanoukville, and a journalist who had reported extensively on this issue, was stopped while in a car with his family. And arrested on charges of, "Incitement to provoke social chaos." Eventually, after pressure from the US and after Dara recorded a video apologising, he was released on bail, but the charges against him have not been dropped. Since Dara's release, a number of other Cambodian journalists have been arrested for their reporting on this issue too.

More recently, the US, which has long supported counter-trafficking and other humanitarian programmes in Southeast Asia, has slashed funds. In Cambodia alone, the US cut $250 million worth of aid contracts, including, by the way, programmes to support independent journalism, combat human trafficking and promote democracy. Now, maybe you don't think that any of this matters much for your life, but maybe it does.

Jake:

This is likely the top form of financial crime impacting Americans, and the vast majority of the response to date has been funded by US foreign assistance. So when that foreign assistance goes away, support that is helping keep Americans safe, prosperous, secure, that also takes a hit.

Rich Thompson:

Or as Erin put it-

Erin:

I think it is a great day to be a criminal, it's a great day to be running a scam operation, because we are running at chaos in the United States.

Rich Thompson:

Hearing all this, maybe you feel like fighting back against scamming is hopeless. Maybe you feel like it's too overwhelming a problem, and so maybe the easiest thing to do is nothing. But that's not true.

Jake:

When we put our hope on institutions or theories or political philosophies, we're bound to be disappointed, we're bound to find ourselves cynical. But when we realise that our hope is actually found in our humanity, and our hope is found in the ways in which that we can interact with other people and find a commonality between and across cultures and people and stations. That's actually where we're more likely to find hope, is in individual stories and individual redemption and communal responses that rally around causes. And those are the places we're going to find our hope, not in the institutions and states and power structures of the world.

Rich Thompson:

So maybe we don't need to wait for governments or law enforcement or institutions. Maybe we don't need to wait for anybody but ourselves. The thing about scamming is, that as big a problem as it is, it's also one where an individual, every single one of us can make a difference.

Jake:

Awareness is really key here.

Jason:

If you tell your family, tell your friends about this, that already is doing a lot. If we can get everyone in the US to know what pig butchering is, and if this becomes a household term, where everyone can identify right away, "Oh, that's a scam." Then I think you're going to see where losses in the US start to really go down.

Erin:

You should be talking about this threat all the time, everywhere to everyone you know. The sooner we can make this the Nigerian Prince, the closer we are to being on the other side of it.

Rich Thompson:

The Nigerian Prince scam, the most notorious scam of the nineties, stopped being effective because people talked about it. And the more people talked about it, the more people knew about it and the less likely they were to fall for it. So let's imagine where pig butchering is a thing of the past, where no one loses their life savings to a lie about love, and no one is tricked into slavery by a fake job. Because the only thing we need to do to create that world, is to talk about it. And that feels like the right place to end this series. Tell someone, tell your mother, your father, your sister, tell your neighbour, your friend. Because the truth is, this is where real change starts. Begins with ordinary people choosing to act, one warning, one conversation, one step of courage at a time.

These scam syndicates use love to exploit and to destroy, but we can choose a different kind of love, the kind that protects, that exposes lies and that stands with the vulnerable. And maybe, if enough of us choose love, the real kind, we can transform what they use to harm, into something that heals. So let's respond, not with rage, but with resolve, with truth, and with a love that simply cannot be faked.

That brings us to the end of our series, Escaping Scam City. But make sure you've hit that subscribe button, as we've got a few bonus episodes in the works. These shorter episodes will be a chance to take you a little deeper into some of the aspects that we've just touched on. I know everyone says this, but if you could take a moment to rate and review the podcast, or even to share it with a friend, it would mean a lot. Not just to us, but to the growing movement of people working to bring this issue to light.

The Fight Of My Life is brought to you by Cadence Productions in partnership with Unheard. This series, Escaping Scam City, was written by Carbio Visvanathan, Nicky Florence Thompson, and me, your host, Rich Thompson. The series producers are Lydia Bowden, Jake Sims, Ben Field, Carrie-Anne Tilson, Carbio Visvanathan, and Rich Thompson. Our theme song is, See Me Fly, by Roza. Our incredible translator is Corinne Powell. Thank you so much, Corinne. Additional sound design by Brendan Ridley. Unheard's Advocacy and support for this project was led by Lydia Bowden, Carrie-Anne Tilson and Laura Entwistle. With a massive thanks to their generous community of supporters, and with a special shout out to Wen, Dane and Val. We're so grateful for all the various contributors to this series, and of course, any views and opinions expressed by individuals, are their own.

Song:

"See me fly."

"You know they'll never catch me for it."

"See me fly."

"The way I put my finger on it."

Rich Thompson:

This series is based on the true story of Micah and Ava, whose names have been changed to protect their identities. Every effort has been made to preserve the integrity of their experiences. In some cases, events have been edited, condensed, or reordered for clarity, safety, or narrative flow. While we've worked hard to verify details, as with all first-hand testimonies, some elements can be difficult to independently confirm. We are so thankful to Micah and Ava for telling their story and elevating this issue on behalf of countless other survivors. And finally, we're thankful to you, for choosing to come on this journey with us. We'll see you on the next episode.

Song:

"Hmm, hmm hmmmm hmmmm. Look."