Criminal gangs increasingly lure people to work in online scam centres, UN migration agency warns

U.S. Amy Pope, Director General of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), briefs the media on Protecting Victims of Trafficking in Online Scam Operations, during a press briefing, at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, Tuesday, July 28, 2026. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP)

GENEVA — The UN’s migration agency is warning that criminal networks have been trafficking hundreds of thousands of people — many of them educated English speakers — to work in online scam centres, and the caseload is growing.

The International Organization for Migration says victims are often lured by fake job advertisements — mostly through social media — promising work abroad, only to get locked up, have their identity documents seized, and forced through violence, threats and “debt bondage” to participate in the online scams.

“We’re seeing so many more of these cases emerge right now,” IOM Director-General Amy Pope told reporters in Geneva on Tuesday. “We’re seeing victims from over 80 different countries being trafficked into the scams.”

‘They’re recruiting people who often speak English very well, who often have graduate degrees, some level of education," Pope said, adding that the cases are “specifically playing out across Asia.”

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 US$114 billion last year, and “scam compounds” across the region could hold hundreds of thousands of trafficked workers.

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.

The Associated Press