Guracha Belachew Bersha, a now-freed Ethiopian man, details scamming hundreds while he was enslaved for 16 months in a pig butchering scam center in Myanmar
A multibillion-dollar cyberfraud industry operating out of Southeast Asia relies on forced labor and torture X: @felizysolo , @mikesmithwriter , @silvermanjacob , @jchengwsj , @jchengwsj , and @jchengwsj LinkedIn: Ken Palla , Vikram Mengi , and Ayelet Biger-Levin X: Feliz Solomon / @felizysolo : Ever wonder who's sending you all those scam texts? It might be someone like Billy — and they may be victims, themselves. W/ @rachelliang5602 and photos by @laurendecicca https://www.wsj.com/... [image] Mike Smith / @mikesmithwriter : A tragic and frightening read in the @WSJ about people forced and tortured into committing scams: https://www.wsj.com/... Jacob Silverman / @silvermanjacob : Another remarkable dispatch from the massive global scam industry operating on the Myanmar/Thailand border. Left unmentioned here is the essential role of Tether in facilitating scams and moving illicit funds. https://www.wsj.com/... Jonathan Cheng / @jchengwsj : One Pakistani man, who had a wife and four children, became obsessed with the woman Billy portrayed and wrote her long essays. When Billy stopped responding, the man sent him a video of himself throwing acid on his face. “Until I die I can't forget it.” https://www.wsj.com/... Jonathan Cheng / @jchengwsj : @felizysolo @rachelliang5602 The cyber frauds they're forced to commit are called pig butchering, named for the way the perpetrators fatten up their victims by gaining their trust before taking their money and cutting them loose. Behind the scenes, the scammers are victims too. https://www.wsj.com/... Jonathan Cheng / @jchengwsj : Posing as ‘Alicia,’ This Man Scammed Hundreds Online. He Was Also a Victim.—A multibillion-dollar cyberfraud industry operating out of Southeast Asia relies on forced labor and torture @felizysolo @rachelliang5602 https://www.wsj.com/... https://www.wsj.com/... LinkedIn: Ken Palla : SCAM CENTER VICTIMS — If you subscribe to the WSJ, here is the tragic story of the trafficked victims that are forced to work in scam centers around the world. … Vikram Mengi : So what's South East Asia known for these days? Holidays, beaches, shopping? If that's what you think, think again! … Ayelet Biger-Levin : Human trafficking with job scams that lead — To forced labor of scamming victims out of their life savings: “When a fintech firm called Huilong Network offered …
Context & Ripple Effects
This account adds firsthand detail to a model already documented in the region: pig-butchering operations built around trust-based investment fraud rather than isolated phishing campaigns.
It also follows reporting that identified Myanmar’s Kokang region as a major hub shaped by criminal networks and political protection, linking the scam economy to the area’s power structure. The forced-labor dimension makes the people sending scam messages both instruments of the fraud and potential trafficking victims.
First-order effects
- Bersha’s testimony gives investigators, platforms, and financial institutions a more concrete account of how captivity and torture can be used to sustain high-volume fraud operations.
- Victims of these schemes face harm from a system in which coerced workers are compelled to build trust and solicit payments, complicating the simple distinction between scammer and victim.
Second-order effects
- Anti-scam and trafficking responses will need to pair disruption of recruitment and confinement with victim identification, rather than treating every operator-level participant as a willing offender.
- Scrutiny can extend beyond scam compounds to the payment routes that convert and move proceeds; prior coverage described a laundering network serving online scammers through crypto and Telegram, while claims about Tether’s role remain allegations in this reporting.
Third-order effects
- If enforcement continues to expose forced labor as an operating input, cross-border cyberfraud may increasingly be treated as a combined financial-crime and human-trafficking problem, requiring coordination across law enforcement, platforms, and payment intermediaries.
- The model’s resilience will depend less on any one script or messaging channel than on whether authorities can disrupt the linked supply chains of recruitment, coercion, victim acquisition, and fund movement.
The trend: Southeast Asia’s scam-compound economy is increasingly being understood as an industrialized convergence of cyberfraud, trafficking, and cross-border money movement.