1360: Scam Compounds | Out of the Loop

25:14Right. And that sounds like quite an easy step from the VPNs. There's other apps that will say, give you every bit of information and photos to match about a particular town, particularly in the US. So they have like, say you're trying to scam someone in one town in Michigan, you can put that town into this app and it comes up with, here are all the coffee shops, right? Here are all the restaurants, here are all the bars. And you can say the exact address that the victim you're trying to scam lives at. They'll say, well, you can say that you're around this coffee shop, here's a receipt from that coffee shop here is an ai model put into that coffee shop and then we'll change that to whoever we want it to be and it will look perfect and then they are getting this data because they have um ways of taking thousands of sim cards and then just getting those the just the phone numbers from them and they can feed them in and then from that they can also get this insane amount of personal information specifically again for us citizens where it's like they know which university you went to, what your address is, how much debt you have, how much college debt you have, what's your mortgage worth.

26:19So then they can tailor those specific scams to how much money you have, what would actually work. And then on top of that, make it seem like instead of being in the jungle in Cambodia or the forest of Madagascar, they're actually someone that you could meet on a dating app and you just keep missing each other because they're busy with conferences, but actually they drink at the same coffee shop as you. This is all so crazy. I want to move on to some of these massive law enforcement actions because this is it's not as recent now as when it was when we tried to originally plan the show. But the two biggest scam linked empires in the world had been hit a couple of months ago by the largest coordinated law enforcement actions probably ever.

27:00They seized billions of dollars with a B. They arrested the I guess you can call them the CEOs. The compounds are essentially collapsing. Like you mentioned before, some of those people are ending up homeless or they turn the place into an immigration detention center. But I think it was in Burma that or maybe it was Cambodia and Thailand. Some of these scam centers are actually being bombed because they're in an active conflict zone. Tell me about this. The war with Thailand has officially sort of like had a ceasefire at the start of the year. Late December, I think it was. And so we're in a bit of a lull.

27:32Yeah, but in November, early December, yeah, was when we were up on the border in an area that used to be very, very jungly and is like right up in the mountains in the middle of nowhere. I think we might have talked about it on your show before because it's just so far in the middle of nowhere, basically to Morda, that it's just like a scam city, basically, that was built for no other reason. we were really really concerned because we were we were going to some of the other compounds along the border where we knew they'd been fighting and we knew that people were still trapped inside and we saw in a different part of that border stretch um two compounds that we knew people were inside because we were in contact with them and that were bombed right in front or had just been bombed as we came up to the hills right and so we were devastated because we didn't know how many people might be trapped in there we didn't know how they would be able to get out there was not exactly like the thais um who were bombing or the cambodian side were sending help to get our victims right and i mean it's a flagrant war crime obviously but then we found what we've interviewed more recently people who were in this other one in the tamor dar one that we couldn't get to because the only bridge in and out had already been bombed and i was seeing videos being shared um from inside some of the compounds uh of drones going over of bombs um we were getting no information about casualties whatsoever um because both sides cambodia at that time was pretending it didn't know there were any compounds there and thailand was pretending that they weren't bombing anything that would be civilian infrastructure so um they were both no one was helping either side but we've now actually met some of the people who were trapped in those compounds and were forced to continue working continually while the bombs were going over and who saw the next compound was be hit and um actually sustained quite bad injuries from trying to escape from this building when i think his chinese boss finally did run away um from hiding you know sort of like hiding in the area trying to stay out of the attacks and then having to get out of this place which is hundreds of miles up a mountain in the middle of nowhere in the jungle right so just the kinds of things that people have lived through the kind of trauma that people have gone through um and just trying to get out of these places has been so horrific can you imagine being on a scam call talking about your fake investment profile and there's a massive explosion and you're just like hey what's that oh the guys in the office next to me are watching a movie exactly i mean how do you I want to see the script that explains that.

29:47So people have told us that exact scenario has happened. And then they've had to ask me, just saw it's fireworks or whatever. There's like, oh, there's also a lot of screaming. Yeah. One guy we spoke to is from Nigeria. He was just like in his bedroom, like, you know, about to be involved in that. And then the seven hours of attacks and then his job instead of doing scams that day was to also help run upstairs and hoist Chinese flags onto the roof so that the ties would be less likely to drone strike any of the buildings that might belong to China, even in some unofficial way. So his scam compound was okay, but the other ones were not, and they were decimated.

30:25And it's been this crazy situation where there's been two rounds of fighting now with Cambodia and Thailand in the last year. And that's a whole other thing. It's disputed land and territory, and there's temples. There's also a huge business relationship between the kind of previous ruler of both that went a bit south. But in terms of the criminal-related stuff, the scam compound areas were hit a lot, but not mentioned in the first round of fighting in the summer. And remember, this is a multi-multi-billion-dollar trade, and for hundreds of kilometers along Cambodia's border with Thailand, there are just cities and cities of scam empires being built.

31:04So a lot of that money is flowing to people in Thailand, but it's also something that Thailand wants to have some control, influence on, and then other areas are targeting Thai people, so they want to shut them down. So there's a lot to all that. But then in the next round of fighting in December, the Thais admitted that the scam industry does exist and is raising money for the Cambodian regime. And they also claimed that they were holding weapons inside scam compounds. I don't think there was any proof of that. But because they say it was raising money for the regime and OK, they could actually point to a lot of really well-connected relatives of the prime minister or senators who own these scam compounds or own the land they're on.

31:43they began to justify striking these buildings, which were full of human trafficking victims. And then because the Thais don't want to admit how many slaves they might have killed and the Cambodians don't really want to admit how many slaves they might have had in the country, no one's looking into how many human trafficking victims might have been burnt alive in these huge, huge compounds over like a few weeks of fighting. That's crazy. And I also find it hella suspicious that they just had a bunch of Chinese Communist Party flags sitting around in this place. And they're like, great, put these on the roof in the designated place on the flagpoles that we have for them already.

32:16Well, they were probably using them for the police scams. I see. I see. OK, that makes sense, because I'm thinking if you say even Americans that, you know, we're flag people, maybe your house has one, but you don't have a bunch to put on the roof when they're drone striking your your skyscraper scams. Well, it's something to think about for the future, you know. Yeah, that's right. I'm just going to make a note here to order a few more. The laughing screams, I love communism more than a hundred Chinese flags on a criminal casino. That's right. Exactly. Just looking out for the little man. What is it?

32:49To each according to, from each according to his ability, to each according to his need. Yes. On top of your scam compound, Karl Marx would be stoked. So this is crazy because what starts as online fraud turns into a literal geopolitical battlefield, complete with drone strikes and air superiority or whatever going on. I mean, this is just totally nuts. And Prince Group, you mentioned before, let's talk about these, the organized crime syndicates, because I think at one point, Prince Group was the largest, one of the largest crime syndicates in the whole world. I mean, this, I don't know how you measure that, but they had just billions of dollars flowing through this.

33:29It's like drug cartel scale money. Oh, yeah. I mean, I think probably grown faster than any drug cartel, I think, Hazepa, and became more powerful, certainly in terms of, I mean, the head of Prince Kriptansar was, until his arrest, I think, the personal advisor to the Prime Minister here. Of Cambodia. Yes. And to his father, when he was Prime Minister, and to the current Interior Minister, and his father, who everyone handed over to their kids about a couple of years ago, it's ridiculous. He's basically been advisor to everyone, was very close with the Singaporean government in different ways um partnered with a major singaporean state-owned construction firm um to build large sections of cambodia that um we know running scam compounds out of now uh was you know he was close to the government of palau he's you know he's he's a very well-connected man in many different places um and after this the us like led this enormous sanctions package um which came out in october last year that should have been the end of the prince group really um the billions and billions that were seized off them and and then continue to be seized off them in assets as this kind of ripple through southeast asia and then further afield and he owned loads of places in the uk and like in the us and that should have been the end of it um but he stayed here and just seemed to be getting things seem to be continued just as normal for for instance until january when they sent him back to china very abruptly um china had been trying to get him back for a long time and i i mean i think he's probably dead now but they've continued to arrest major people since then.

34:57The police action here kind of started around the same time. Basically, the simplest way of explaining the change in heart here, I would think would be that for decades and decades, Cambodia has been really, really good at playing the US and China off against each other whenever they want something from either of them. This was one of those rare moments when the US and China were both angry with them for the same reason and kind of wanted the same outcome, which was to shut down the scam compounds that were taking so much money out of their respective countries. And also, they were now at war with Thailand, and they needed to not lose their biggest supplier of weapons, which is China.

35:33And actually, they were rewarded for this because they went on this rampage and didn't close down the scam compounds so much as sent the warning out that they would be closed. And then lots of bosses ran away and lots of trafficking victims sort of wandered out, stung into the street. These places, by the way, for folks who don't know, they were laundering billions of dollars for scams. But when you're laundering billions of dollars for your own scams, think of it like Amazon, right? You know how Amazon had, they were selling all these things online, right? So they needed better servers. So they created AWS, Amazon Web Services, because they needed that for their own store.

36:06And then they were like, hey, this is actually a business arm, because we've got these massive data centers that we could actually rent capacity out to other massive tech companies instead of them having to build their own. And now they're going, well, wait a minute. We have to use UPS and Federal Express and the U.S. Postal Service to deliver all these packages. What if we create a, what's it called, a last mile delivery service of our own? So now you've got Amazon trucks. This is what's happening for money laundering from these scam compounds. So they're saying, we got billions of dollars of our own we got to launder.

36:36And then drug cartels go, hey, you know what? I got this problem where I have all this cash too. You think you could help me out? And they go, you know what? Probably. And the triads go, hey, I heard you're laundering money for the cartels. You know, we We kind of have to do this, too. And North Korea says money laundering. Did somebody say money laundering? I've got 10 billion dollars in stolen cryptocurrency that I need to figure out how to turn into something. Why don't we run this through there, too? So you've got these massive criminal networks. That's why trafficking in people always is also trafficking in weapons and always almost always is also trafficking in drugs.

37:06Because if you've got a massive underground network of railroad, if you want to call it that, why are you only moving your product through it? You might as well have those people also hold a package full of cocaine and, you know, having a guy carry a briefcase with a couple hundred grand in cash in it while you're at it. You know, you've got a train of slaves walking through tunnels, make them carry something else for one of your clients. Right. So that's kind of how this all dovetails together. What's particularly insane about this situation is the professionalization of it. Right. So most of the major scam developers, not just Prince, because Prince also had a bank, a major bank here.

37:37well I mean they deny it but like they're kind of widely thought to be closely linked to the YL network and HPAY which is the other sort of big criminal group that was sanctioned around the same time and they were doing money laundering on this enormous enormous scale and but pretty much every single major scam compound owner dodgy casino owner that we've looked into over the last five six years they've all developed their own payment apps so their actual own literal payment apps to transfer that money and within the scam compounds they're always looking for how they They could make that little bit of extra money by making people's lives extra miserable.

38:11So they'll set up things inside there where you can buy some extra things if you do have any access to money or you are getting paid a tiny bit for your work. But then they massively overcharge you for everything. So water will be crazy expensive. Basic amenities will be crazy expensive. You can get maybe food delivery to your building, but it will be crazy expensive. And you have to do everything through their app that they made for that area, which also means and we've never been able to get a kind of clear number on how much money they were making. But there was actually a really good 101 East documentary that came out last week where they did a really good undercover interview with a guy in Myanmar who was explaining how much money they make just from this.

38:46And he was like, oh, yeah, between 10 and 20 million dollars a month just by basically essentially exploiting the people they've already trafficked into scam because they have to buy extra amenities from inside this area. Cafeteria in the slave compound. Yeah, exactly. But if you think that your payment app from running what is basically often it's like the super apps, it's like a combination of like Uber Eats. Well, I guess Uber is a good example, right? Because it has Uber Eats and it has cars, right? That's kind of what a lot of these place things do. These super apps where you can also be, you can also, if you're allowed to move around, they also let you book cars and things.

39:19So like what it means is if you have 10 to 20 million a month going into this app, but you also then make that app available outside of the compound, then people do start using it for legitimate reasons as well. So then you have millions or less than you do in the compounds, but you still have other money flowing into that same space. And you have all these criminal groups being like, oh, can we also manipulate your payment app so that we can move all of our drug money through or all of our human trafficking money through? and it all gets blended into this massive mess of licit and illicit capital.

39:50So that's actually been what's more damaging economically is that it's so hard to unpick that. And you just end up risking crumbling an entire economy when you try and shut these things down as well. You know, it's interesting. A show fan told me that he'd been listening to the show for quite a while and he'd heard the episodes we did in the past. And he actually went to the Cambodian Scam Center area and took pictures. And he went to like, what was it like King's Roman Casino or whatever that place is going triangle yeah yeah and i was like why did you do that and he goes i don't know the same reason you went to north korea and i was like oh i gotta next time you're there you gotta meet nathan and lindsey because uh they're the other white people there those are the other white people and he's he was saying he was outside talking to guys from like sri lanka that said that they were international bankers or something like that and he's like yeah but real talk you're leaning against a scooter and a tuk-tuk in a parking lot outside of a scam center so i don't think you're actually a banker just uh call me crazy yeah no the entire place is sanctioned so i don't know what bank he would be in as well but it's right i think that the whole thing though the prince group sanctions and kind of rise and kind of fall of them just shows you though the scale of what we're in yeah so imagine thinking about the 1980s and everyone's talking about escobar and how much we need to bring this guy down because he's he's flooding the streets of miami with cocaine and then if you just looked at it like oh man drug trafficking got pretty bad under escobar good that we've then done something about escobar um and i don't realize actually when he was coming up everyone else was as well and he was creating a like structural system that meant that drug trafficking was just going to be part of society on a global scale and continuing to grow This is that, and then this is more.

41:42So Prince Group were able to come into, like, yeah, okay, first of all, Cambodia, Chinese guy comes here, he's able to buy a citizenship for the country, and then he is able to set up scam compounds involving other criminal activity, but also have a legitimate relationship with the government and at the same time build the biggest property empire in Cambodia that had ever been seen. So some of those properties were used for scam compounds. Some were not, and some were used for both. So you could have an apartment there, and there's like 20 Taiwanese guys in the apartment next to you doing scams.

42:18But it meant that they then invested all this money into Cambodia, and then they were building full cities. They were building full, massive developments. They added hundreds of hectares of land onto Rheem in Cambodia so that it actually increased the size of the country. And then they built all of this. And then they took that same model when they were still growing, and they went to Palau and they developed relationships with the government there. And you start seeing them develop relationships in similar groups with countries all around the world. And they're often countries that are developing or have a diplomatic relationship with Taiwan.

42:50So China kind of allows them a bit of rope to go there and get involved and have a little bit of influence for the money that's coming through. But then when you do decide, wait a minute, this has gotten too big, which always happens with every criminal group. And when the Americans and the Chinese and the Japanese and the South Koreans and the European Union are all saying, Cambodia, this is mental. You are stealing all of our money and you're stealing all of the human beings and they just keep coming here and your entire government's in on it. You have to stop. They kind of went, yeah, okay.

43:21So they did accept those sanctions in a way. And then they sent Chenzi off to China when it felt like there was no other options. And then they've now been able to just seize those assets. So take billions of dollars and then put it back into the hands officially of the government because now they're criminal seized assets so you get the mafia to build you a country and then you take it back from them when you're done oh my gosh yeah literally billions and billions and billions of dollars in assets like physical buildings um like infrastructure um construction that was basically funded by groups like prince has been now seized formally by the government which basically means the the two families really the hun family and then like the family that have been controlling the Ministry of the Interior for all the time here.

44:04And those two families have many family members who have turned up as names of directors of companies that they shared with a lot of the scam directors, right? So it's just wild that they are still benefiting. And in the meantime, like, so when I said about the reward from China, at the peak of the crackdown, Chinese foreign ministers did a delegation where they went to a few different countries in Southeast Asia, They went to Thailand and they made it very clear in a statement afterwards that they were neutral on the war situation, but they would continue to invest in Thailand. Then they came here.

44:35They have a chat. They announced that Cambodia is doing so well on the crackdown that they have decided to give them a ton of military equipment and will be doing joint police and military operations in the near future. So then Cambodia gets all these toys sent over that it can't afford. Thailand goes a bit quiet on the whole border issue for a while. and now it's becoming clearer and clearer that the Chinese are not very happy with where it's going here in Cambodia and they think it is creeping back in and it is um a lot of places haven't fully been shut down and the very few actually senior people have been arrested within Cambodia at any point right so it might switch again but now they've kind of got what they want um so it will probably rebound here but in the meantime yeah the people who allowed this to happen or in some cases profited from it directly have profited now again from the crackdown and And it's kind of like, you know, in Singapore, like a few years ago when they had the biggest ever money laundering crackdown of all time.

45:29Your Maurerberger? No, no. The Fuzhan gang who were actually linked. And I won't get into the weeds, but they're kind of also linked to the Prince Group. But they'd made all their money from online gambling and scams in Cambodia and the Philippines running horrific scam compounds. But within Singapore, they were only being tried for money laundering because that's what happened in Singaporean territory. So by the time the trial was even concluded, they'd finished their sentences. They were all out in between nine and 18 months, right? And then they'd all bought passports for other countries like Cambodia, like Vanuatu, like Turkey.

45:59And they all just went off and didn't have to go back to China where they were still wanted. So they've never been tried for any of the really bad stuff. And in the meantime, the Singaporean government kept the billion dollars that they took off them. And they're trying currently, I think, to get some of the money that they were holding in Cambodia. And Cambodia is saying, oh, no, that was laundered in Cambodia. It's just we should get it. But either way, these two governments that really allowed this kind of created the environments for this to happen and have not suffered in any way personally as a result are now getting all of the money that none of that's going back to victims of scams or human trafficking victims.

46:34You know, all that money is sitting there while so many people are suffering, they've lost their money or are trapped in the streets of Cambodia and can't go back to like, you know, Rwanda. And yeah. What's happened, because you mentioned they've seized billions of dollars in physical assets. What about the 15 billion in cryptocurrencies seized by U.S. authorities as a result of this? It's not being used yet. I mean, there's some discussion over whether the U.S. authorities even have full access to it. But I think there's a bit of internal debate right now about where that should go and how that should be spent.

47:02And there are also a lot of them, there's a lot of discussion about whether we should be trying to make some kind of legal case here to look at the victims of human trafficking and the victims of scams who have had so much money taken away from them or have had their lives destroyed by being tortured every day to do that. that maybe when we're talking about billions of dollars in crypto or millions of dollars on London penthouses or helicopters in London or yachts and wherever, maybe some of that money should actually be going back to the victims. And the problem, it seems, is that there's this phrase that people use like state capture of organized crime where criminal groups kind of take the country, but it's probably not really the way it works.

47:42It's more that the governments are willingly being captured, but they're still in control. And I think that's now the way that it is working. And that's the really scary bit. Because, yeah, like Lindsay said, when the money's getting dibied out, it's the states who remain. Those same people, those same institutions remain in place. And then they take that cash. And then somehow you can go from being this pariah state in Cambodia where you have pissed off US, America and everyone equally. And now, yes, having joint military exercises agreed with US, China, India and Russia all in the same year.

48:15and I don't know what other country could do that. So it doesn't destroy your reputation. And now that same pattern is developing in other places where African states or South Asian states or Pacific Island states are giving themselves in a way to show these mafia groups, the criminal, Chinese criminal groups specifically, but also Russian groups in Africa and saying, build, build, build, do a lot of crime. And then the crime overlaps with the drugs or counterfeit cigarettes or arms trafficking, wildlife trafficking. Then it gets too much. you move to the next one. But the countries remain in the same power and the same leadership, and they benefit overall from that money that comes in.

48:53And then the criminal networks just continue to grow and develop gray market economies and all of these places they leave behind, like the digital platform apps. So they just continue to grow their industry. They just do their sketchier and sketchier visible stuff in the next place along. These compounds are being hit by F-16s right now. Apparently, the report spam button finally got an upgrade. Am I right? We'll be right back. This episode is also sponsored in part by BetterHelp. The stigma of mental health can be quiet. It's the idea that you should be able to handle everything yourself. It's feeling guilty for asking for help.

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51:52Now, back to Lindsay and Nathan. So it's like a disease because it's 15 billion seized in crypto by the U.S. authorities, major seizures in U.K., Singapore, Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong. But the real damage is, well, the financial damage in those places is enormous, right? Older people, especially giving away all their life savings to a romance scammer or a crypto scammer. But yeah, good point, right? Because now you've got this sort of gap in your economy. And the only thing left is, well, we've got this criminal payment app and we've still got the trafficking a little bit. We have maybe the scam center's gone, but we still have all the security guys that we brought in from Africa.

52:31So now they're sort of in a gang doing whatever they're doing to survive. I mean, you leave this like disgusting crust. You take out a tumor, right? A scam center and you throw the boss in jail in China, like with Prince Group. But all of this personnel are still there and they're still bad guys, you know, and they're still they've still got to survive. And it's just insane that there's been no attempt. So many different countries and so many different international agencies have been increasingly vocal about this being one of the biggest criminal crises in the world for the last couple of years.

53:04rate, they've increasingly understood the size and the scale and the damage that it's doing, and have been calling for things like crackdowns in Cambodia. But then the fact that there was no idea of what would happen then next, like how did they, the idea that like, well, you finally got what you wanted, that Cambodia did do a real crackdown for, and then suddenly, but there was no consideration of how 200 ,000 people might get back to their home countries. And if they couldn't, what might happen then? And like, what other option they might have? And you know, there are people that we've talked to who were literally tortured because they refused to scam Americans when they got when they realized what the job was literally tortured and then they have got out of that scum compound and then they've been told you know there's no help coming from any of the countries that or you know that you refused to hurt and so they don't care about you now trapped here being rearrested on the street that's the message you're hearing right and so the next time that if you've got no no way of getting home and no money left you're going to starve on the streets to Cambodia and someone says, do you want to come and do it willingly this time and you won't get tortured and you're good at it now?

54:06You know, you might be like, why not? Why not just give in? Yeah, I understand that. And it's just sort of even beyond it being a humanitarian crisis, just the idea that there's not been a plan for how you stop all those people from being immediately recycled into the criminal infrastructure, to me is mind boggling, especially at a moment when so many sanctioned countries as well are looking for ways to make a lot of money and evade sanctions right places like russia are desperately trying to work out how they can make a ton of money and get it back into russia so it's like insane that you're like oh look there are hundreds of thousands of people who have been trained to do this one thing that we know hurts us i guess we'll just let them scutter back off into the ether and no further questions you know of course it needs to be seen as this huge warning to the rest of the world because i mean we were on your pod years ago screaming about scam compounds being a real thing right and and there's some other people doing that as well and no one was really listening until it was too late right until they'd taken over full countries and they just made billions and billions and billions of dollars and that was spread out into the most sophisticated money laundering system we've ever seen right so we were trying to warn about it and now we can see how that continues to grow but now the world's starting to listen to the scam and human trafficking but you need that humanitarian response section as the next bit that's just being ignored and the big ngos are really not doing anything they don't have the funding assigned for this because it's such a specific thing but it's a displacement crisis right and there's like us with eyewitness project there's a few journalists and there's a great new ngo called the eos collective that is setting up and we're all trying to work together to help the victims of human trafficking who are stuck but it shouldn't be us it shouldn't be people who are writing about this then trying to work out how to run a development system to get them food accommodation and flights home and liaised with embassies right like there should be a huge international response to this because we already know that in places where russia and france like in the sahel are having yes like the competing kind of soft power um like strategies we know the russians are finding people who are pretty pissed off of the french and can put them into scam compounds willingly right so that you can go there globally find people who do not like a specific country, but you speak that language and you can find them willing to do things to that state.

56:18And we say when you leave people on the streets for months, like Lindsay said, or even longer, because there's still thousands here and we don't know what's going to happen to them, then what else are they going to do? And they're every day getting texts saying, do you want to come back into the work? Because we can take you to Laos, we can take you to Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Uganda, Madagascar, whatever, tomorrow. And they're still saying no. So anyone that's here needs that help. And we're going to see the same cycle just repeated again and again for the next day and the next day. I was going to say, every time a war breaks out and there's conscription, it's a matter of time before you start seeing the first scam compounds also recruiting actively for that.

56:52So I saw my first, like, a few months ago, I saw the first ones looking for Hebrew speakers that were saying, you know, you don't have to be from Israel, but obviously that's who we'll be targeting. And so that was like, oh, that will be a lot of people, I imagine, who are leaving because it's like, you know, that don't want to be conscripted right now. And we saw the same things with Russia, with Ukraine, with countries where people were really frightened, young people are frightened and they're leaving en masse as well. And so, and there hasn't really been much consideration of how you might think about and prevent the next ones, right?

57:19It's kind of this assumption that you must just be a really poor person from middle of it in a Bangladeshi village, where there's actually quite a lot of reasons why you're suddenly vulnerable and abroad and don't have access to actual decent work either, right? Yeah, that's a really good point. It really shows the intimacy between crime and state power, and that the groups are not just tolerated but are strategically useful laundering for sanctioned actors like you mentioned cyber crime infrastructure financial warfare channels political leverage inside a fragile state like cambodia i mean it just this type of money throws off the balance of power in these really fragile areas really quickly and really easily the other point i just want to add on to that as well is because actually all of the kind of tech ecosystem around the scams are also so huge now right so So like, you know, you can actually start spreading the different pieces of your business into different things.

58:07It's much harder to identify it as a single scam entity for police or for governments in that country. So I've seen some scam groups that are like, oh, our back end developers are now based in Japan. And our content makers, who are often things like bloggers who are putting out making fake news and AI stuff for sites so that people click on ads that take you to fake crypto platforms, that kind of thing. um they're in the philippines because that bit's not actually illegal there right or it's confusing whether it is and then but then you'll put your you know your front line definitely trafficked horrific conditions people in you know in the middle of the jungle somewhere or in a country that has not figured this out yet um like or like madagascar right or like or rural minmar or here so you start like really separating it out and so it's possible as well that somewhere like cambodia will fill that gap for a while by trying to have the more kind of like it style jobs or financing jobs that are harder to identify instantly as being part of that ecosystem.

59:03Yeah, yeah. This reminds me of I had that guy from Dubai who worked in a scam compound reach out to me. And one of the things that he mentioned was that there was a whole company that was in charge of just their VPN and creating different IP addresses for everybody in the scam compound and keeping their data secure and making sure outside actors couldn't go in and find out who they were scamming and stuff like that. And they came in every week. And I said, wow, that's a any idea how much it costs is like i know exactly how much it costs because i'm the guy who's he was the assistant to one of the bosses right so he's like he costs this one and i thought wow there's a small business and their entire clientele is scam centers and all they do is obscure ip addresses and this is like a seven figure business for some small group of it professionals in dubai and it's all they do so one of the guys that we've been trying to help um the last few months was in a few different scam compounds but he was um he's from from an east african state and he went to dubai to work as a mechanic um and like not great conditions but he was like like really had like a lot of knowledge on on like tech and on like internet safety but could also fix a bike so he ended up like being in you know kind of shady conditions in dubai fixing motorbikes inside the roads i went it's okay but it's not really making any money and then someone got into i said well come to cambodia you can i maybe was like uh yeah you can work on internet like people knew that he was good with like developing software and protecting their systems like he had a reputation for that just because it's what he liked doing so when he got to cambodia they got him in and then he realized oh wait i've been trafficked and then his specific job was just maintaining the vpn and that was completely necessary for any of the operations to work otherwise everyone is in the you know a town in cambodia and not where they say they were and he you know basically didn't make any money and he was yeah went through like physical abuse in this horrible situation but he said he was able to use that position uh to help someone because of how much power it gave him where there was a woman who was seven months pregnant and the chinese um bosses and some of the moroccan guards kept beating her for not being able to scam enough people and they were explaining i think she's not really going to get much better lads she's seven months pregnant and deeply traumatized maybe just stop beating her and for some reason she's still able to be alive and maybe the kid is too so just stop it and they wouldn't and they were doing other things to her and he went all right i'm just going to stop doing your vpn i went well we're going to do something to you and then the guy who was forced into running their finance and their accounts and actually paying the guys in the crypto or getting the usd in and handing over went i'm not going to do that today and then there was like a little collection yeah and then they and they went all right fine and they flew the girl back into East Africa and then they all got back to work.

1:01:53So yeah, they can work once or twice and then they just send bigger guys in with more guns. But yeah. The power of strikes and collective action even in a scam compound. Put those communist flags up. Yeah. Put those Chinese flags on the roof. All jokes aside though, it really does come down to the human cost, right? The buildings that are being airstruck by F-16s and drones. There's trafficking victims trapped in there, caught between criminal gangs, airstrikes, and corrupt authorities. And I would imagine during an armed conflict, their escape routes shrink too. You can't just walk through the jungle anymore because you're going to get shot or step on a landmine because they don't want that anymore.

1:02:30What have you guys been doing? I know you have increasing involvement in some of the rescues. You've been documenting, I guess you would call it war crimes, helping negotiate releases, and watching conditions deteriorate from all of these different scam centers in all these different areas and all these poor victims. And I say poor victims, knowing that they've also scammed people. But I think I think all of us can put ourselves into the shoes of somebody who's being imprisoned and beaten and tortured and say, would you then call an old person that you don't know on the other side of the world and try to get them to send you money?

1:03:00And the answer is going to be yes. And like every almost every case without exception. Well, also, like, yeah, not everyone was even a scammer. Like some people have been used for forced online sex work, which basically means they get raped all day. So I mean, like, you know, there are lots of things that could have happened to people then they'll get put into the same boat when they leave i didn't even think about that yeah i mean that's terrible um but yeah um i mean nashley nathan you've been leading most we've been a lot of driving around the country picking people up yeah what's the maybe you should start with the story you told me in the middle of the night once which you said i'm sitting in a room surrounded by ballistic vests and we're blasting i think it was a pink pony club or something on the yeah tell us this story let's wrap with this story okay right so this was this was actually the prince compound this is a few days after they announced the uh the sanctions we did want to see whether or not anything had happened to this one particularly notorious compound which had been named the golden fortune compound which had been named in the sanctions um so we drove over there it's on the vietnam border and as we we drove up to it we were like pretty sure it's still fully occupied doesn't seem to make a difference than yet and the the uh they'd opened the gate to allow what i think what was a human trafficking vehicle in uh in front of us and Nathan just pulled in after it and followed closely behind in his car to see if we'd get in it's easier to get into a human trafficking compound than out yeah it turns out as it turned out as we discovered you don't say so yeah so we drove around we took some videos and photos very quickly we were like yep there's still people in cages literal cages yeah yeah we were like this is still occupied we'd get out of here very quickly um drove back around um in the hope that we could maybe try and do the same thing the way back out and we were being chased at this point by quite a lot of very angry guards and Chinese gangsters who started like hitting our car and like making calls and we were like oh god and then they briefly raised the barrier again to let a different vehicle out and they had just kind of like floored it toward like after this and it was kind of very film-like with all these guards jumping out of the way but so fast that we as we went over like the speed bump on the way out we could have like actually did flew through the air a little bit as we went into oncoming traffic and then sped into oncoming traffic drove towards the border i was like drive to the vietnam vietnam border because the uh immigration like officials and like border force might not be you know in prince's pocket and as we drove towards them we saw they were already on walkie-talkies looking for our car so we were like oh they are shit so turned around very quickly and the only way back out is to go back past this compound and so as we're driving out past it um with with all these cars sort of like realizing clocking our car and like starting and run after us.

1:05:29And Nathan was like, put some music on. So I just turned the song on. Yes, important. Before you do anything else, put on Billie Eilish. So we turned it on. It was Pink Pony Club, which is Nathan is apparently in the 0.1 top percent of listeners of this song globally, if Chapel Rome would like. So, you know, yeah. And so, but the opening line of Pink Pony Club is, I know you wanted me to stay. So as we're driving past this, we start just like laughing hysterically because we can't believe we just survived this. and now it's kind of become a bit of an anthem for us. Yeah, I bet. Victims are trapped between gangsters and airstrikes.

1:06:06So yes, your Monday was annoying, but perspective people, we'll be right back. This episode is brought to you in part by Lufthansa. If you travel a lot, especially internationally, you know the flight itself can make or break the whole trip. On a long haul flight, if you're uncomfortable, if you can't sleep or you can't settle in, you feel it, not only during the flight, but after you land too. That's what makes Lufthansa Allegra stand out. It's designed around how people actually travel now with a range of options. On Lufthansa Allegra's, they have five different business class seat options for you to choose from.

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1:07:01Visit Lufthansa.com and search for Allegris to learn more. Lufthansa Allegris. All it takes is a yes. Limited availability on select routes. More routes coming soon. Don't forget about our newsletter, Wee Bit Wiser. The idea, something specific and practical that'll have an immediate impact on your decisions, psychology, and relationships in under two minutes. If you haven't signed up yet, I invite you to come check it out. It's a great companion to the show. jordanharbinger.com slash news is where you can find it now for the rest of my conversation with nathan and lindsey so here's my next question though they're looking for you they're looking for your car aren't you worried they're going to eventually find you because you're still kind of there we don't own a car we rent a different one ever it was a rental never mind they've stopped asking us where we go when we bought when we rent them now i mean yeah i mean like we've we've had a few brett's from the prince guys but so about a bunch of other amazing reports and some NGOs and just a lot of people.

1:07:57I think they've got bigger problems now. I think they mostly don't want to get a black bag on their head and get flown to China. So right now, probably safer in a way for being able to speak about them. And there's other criminal groups that are doing the same thing. There's other groups that are connected to them. There's the existing version of Prince that continues to operate. But I mean, it's always a lot safer for us than people who are reporting on it locally or maybe cops are actually trying to arrest these people and their bosses are working for them. So, yeah, there's a bit of that, but I think we're still always about to say that.

1:08:29They got bigger fish to fry than a couple of crazy journalists who'd have really poor sense of personal preservation. Yes, exactly. But I think, yeah, but to go around to your question before, so I think since the crack gun started, there's been a lot of calls for help from people who've just been stuck outside a compound somewhere or in an area of the country where they just can't leave on the thai border especially when particularly concerning because no one knows when the war might kick off again um and so we've been driving around the country a lot trying to like pick people up bring them back nathan's been doing a lot of that and then once they're in phnom penh and trying to get them into the very few uh kind of shelters for um trafficking because there are or alternative housing where they can at least be sort of safe and getting food and like you know um all of that's been funded by like just individual people helping out there's a go and then it's just whatever own cash or transferred stuff in and then even the NGOs that are working on it are often other they're all kind of like their own cash so I guess what we're doing is we're doing that we're trying to continue to support we're trying to still investigate these overlaps in crime and conflict and corruption around the world and then also try and support the victims or find a way that we can so we can investigate what's actually happening and not just Cambodia but go to Madagascar look at Afghanistan look at forced criminality, look at all of the people who are actual victims of organized crime and conflict, and then actually try to support them as well.

1:09:55So you can see what's coming, and then try to do something about it, rather than just go, oh, well, we said that would happen. I guess we'll just go on and find the next thing. And people just sit there completely traumatized with no support. And it's now more important than ever, because like USAID stopping, and the amount of cash that was actually going into development and to help people is shrinking so much. So anyone who is in kind of awkward to describe in like a philanthropy like meeting that like these people did criminal stuff but they were also trafficked and that's just a little bit too awkward so it means that it's really difficult to get funding and support for people in this massively growing enterprise like forced criminality that links between crime and conflict and it just connects every security issue in the world do you guys still have the gofundme up we could throw it into the show notes because i think people listening might be like oh help human trafficking victims like yeah I've got 50 bucks for that.

1:10:46Yeah, yeah, yeah. We do. But we also, we can update that a bit because actually the 25 people originally were trying to get home. They're all now home. They all got flights. Oh, great. We kind of partnered with another organization. And then we've ended up, yeah, using a lot of the money to like keep supporting people day to day. So yeah, anything is really, really helpful right now, especially. And also even just things like getting translators and here for people who don't speak English or Khmer and who've been imprisoned here and like, you know, all these things need money. So it's kind of, that would be amazing.

1:11:14So we'll put the GoFundMe up or a GoFundMe and any listeners can help out with that. And then if any actual people that have proper money, we just want to fund their organization to do this, then they'll also get in touch. Yeah, yeah. If you got big money, yeah, then email us and we'll set it up. Actually, yeah. If somebody really wants to like throw something at this, email me jordan at jordanharbinger.com. I'll introduce them to you so that they're not like pinging GoFundMe to donate$7 ,000. Because sometimes people really do surprise me. I did a fundraise for something else and people donated really tens of thousands of dollars sometimes.

1:11:47And I was really taken aback by that. And of course, what I don't want is for them to then pay like a 5 % processing fee to some company to do that. That's just a waste. I'm also aware of like the irony of beginning this podcast with saying, don't trust anyone you've never met and send them cash. That's true. And hey, here's a link to give us your money. That's right. And she was like, here's my actual email address. Just email me and send it to me. Honestly, I'll pass it on. That's right. It's for sure not a scam at jordanharbinger.com. That will also work. So, man, I wonder if Cambodia is going to reform or simply rebrand.

1:12:25And are these scam cities, are they going to collapse and fracture like they seem to have been? Or are they going to start to militarize? Because this is a different model of transnational crime. It's almost like a new conflict model. I really thought the whole corporations become government and the military. That was going to be some dystopian cyberpunk future in the developed world. Right. Neo Tokyo, Neo Detroit. No, Southeast Asia speed running it here in 2026. It's crazy to me. I think one thing we are really, really scared of is how many scam compounds have been taken over by the General Department of Prisons under the Ministry of Interior and rebranded.

1:13:04Some of them have put out photos on Facebook and stuff and trying to claim that they're like new construction sites of prisons. When we know that was one of them was Park 8. It had just been sanctioned by the UK government and we've just been there with the doors a lot. And we can recognize it still had some of the signs for the illegal gambling sites in the background. Like when they're walking around. This is our new prison. It's a fanduel.com slash Cambodia sign in the background. But whatever. Ignore that. Ignore that. Yeah. And so we are very, very concerned about. at one point we thought that as a stopgap maybe um why it's one of the reasons why so many trafficking victims um so survivors of scams that uh we one of the reasons we thought that they were being targeted by the police um so much was as a stopgap because you know yeah it's a huge economic gap and a lot of that money was going to things like the authorities to keep an eye on scam compounds and um and bring people back if they run away and offer security a lot of money They need to fill that.

1:13:58A lot of money. They need to fill that, yeah. So at first we were concerned that they were just basically trying to extort the same amount of money per person that they had been being paid in protection money per person before. But now it's looking increasingly sinister because we don't know why so many new prisons are being built and scam compounds. And we don't really know whether or not. They keep talking about things like floating the idea that some of these prisons will be used, especially the youth ones to make things for the war effort for example oh so you're gonna have sweatshops with people making mortar rounds or something and bullets it's already happening they say it's like yeah non-lethal stuff like trenches but uh yeah it's already beginning yeah wow slave labor yeah so my real concern i mean already there's an issue with forced labor in prisons in in cambodia um like making things like school uniforms depressingly um at one point but um there's been all kinds of things that are made in prisons um uh yeah by this captive market and there's all kinds of ways in which people are exploited and extorted in prison and so most countries don't want their prisons to be overcrowded because they don't it's cost you money to have people in prison here you are making quite a bit of money from everyone who goes to prison so we i don't want it to be true but i am really really concerned that there is a kind of handover of literal slaves from a private criminal market to a official government a controlled market and that we won't be able to see what happens to those people if they go back into these buildings that have been set up for scams so the government has seen that i mean slaves that does work uh that does make money um and then when they can take all the facilities off that are already built to hold people against their will the risk is that you have what are seen as fragile states bring criminal groups in and like we said build the country but then when they leave and this creates about two-thirds roughly um a conservative estimate of the value of cambodia's gdp when it was at its strongest a few months ago so then there is a massive gap like where do you fill that and drug raids have went massively up um drug seizures went up although arrests have not because again most likely just taking the cash and people are going on and then so what do you do with it well then there is the criminal aspects of this and there are a lot of senators and people connected to the government who are making a lot of money and will find a new criminal-related exploits or bring back elements of scams, and some scams are still staying here, but then there's also just the country that doesn't really like journalists or political opposition or anyone who says anything online they don't want, and that's a similar trend to other vulnerable states that can be taken over or worked with these kind of groups, well then when they leave that infrastructure behind, it's pretty great for emboldening your authoritarianism because you don't need to build more prisons.

1:16:37Cambodia's already got the second highest prison population in the world was great because they just got a bunch of free prisons they didn't need to spend any money on unbelievable wow so i hope you guys stay safe i do worry about you guys over there don't you still live between two scam compounds or something like that yeah i think they don't scam there anymore they just sleep there officially uh i wouldn't say anything okay yeah well yeah no they're still there you can't even answer this question that's how this this is why i worry about you guys you can't even answer the question without worrying about it Well, I mean, yeah, I think one of the bigger concerns is very near to where we are is a place that we're fairly sure is a reception centre for people arriving or was for people arriving in scams.

1:17:18And then they just put out recently, a few weeks ago, they put outside it and a branded umbrella. This was amazing. There's merch as well. Oh, yeah. Gangsters love merch. A branded umbrella for an illegal site which was proven to be running out of a scum compound up in Bavere a while ago and was at one point the sponsor of a few different football teams. But anyway, it was using slavery to staff it. They've just put, it's actually illegal to even advertise online gambling here. And they put this directly outside next to the police bike that's always parked there. So that's fun. Wow. Yes. And it's almost like you're just kind of, it's there to announce that this is part of the industry.

1:17:55And the bike is there to announce that. And that's fine. Unbelievable. Yeah. Well, thank you both so much. Your work is incredibly important. And again, we'll link to the GoFundMe in the show or similar in the show notes. So get that to me when you can. And if people want to do something bigger, email me and I'll introduce you guys. Thank you so much. Again, please stay safe. I always do sort of whenever I see a text from Nathan, I'm like, please just be an update or a cool story and not like, hey, we're in prison. Do you know anybody who can bail us out? Great to run into you in the vet, Jordan.

1:18:26Yeah, yeah, exactly. Oh, my gosh. Stay safe, you too. Thank you so much. All right. Cheers, man. You too. Okay. Bye-bye. The most powerful longevity tool may not be in a supplement bottle or high-tech clinic. It might be the simple movement most of us barely think about. So I have plenty of patients that are in chronic pain. People's feet are weak. The footwear is compromising the function of their feet. And this is what we get. One out of three people over the age of 45 have foot pain. People don't pay attention to their feet. We talk about, you know, meeting people where they are. Getting to 5 ,000 steps a day decreases the risk of depression.

1:19:06This is a very, very big thing that I think should be on every prescription pad. That sweet spot is about 7 ,000 to 8 ,000 steps a day. That's game-changing. You got to put the work in. You know, you have to put the work in for anything that's worth doing. Getting outside and having that repetitive motion, we're stimulating neurotransmitters in our brain. We're decreasing cortisol. You're increasing your parasympathetic state, which is the chill state. These are all very, very good things. If you start paying attention to this stuff, it will save you so much in the long run because I see people every single day that cannot walk because something hurts because of foot pain every single day.

1:19:46My goal is to keep people walking as much as they want to as they age, and that's going to happen by making sure that their foot is strong. Please pay attention to your feet. Look at them. Can you move your toes? Can you splay your toes? And if not, start to work on things to improve the strength of your foot. Wear a shoe that's more functional, that respects the anatomy of your foot. If you do just those things, you'll probably stay out of my office. Check out episode 1322 with Dr. Courtney Conley, which reveals how a few strategically timed steps can add healthier years to your life. What makes this story so disturbing is not just the scale of the fraud.

1:20:25It's that the people trapped inside these compounds are now caught between traffickers, corrupt governments, and actual military strikes. The scam economy might be collapsing in places, but collapse doesn't necessarily mean rescue for these people. Sometimes it just means more chaos. Links to Nathan and Lindsay's work and the GoFundMe or whatever it's going to be that we mentioned for the human trafficking victims that they're helping rescue, that'll be in the show notes, which are always on the website. Advertisers, deals, discount codes, ways to support the show, all at jordanharbinger.com slash deals.

1:20:54Please consider supporting those who support the show. Don't forget about 6-Minute Networking as well over at 6minutenetworking.com. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. And this show is created in association with Podcast One. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Tata Sidlowskis, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for the show is you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. In fact, the greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about.

1:21:22If you know somebody who's interested in the human trafficking angles, scams, fraud, cybercrime, definitely share this episode with them. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn. And we'll see you next time.