Meet Cambodia cyber slaves

[geovalin]

Once a financial securities analyst in China, Lu Xiangri never imagined he might be a victim of trafficking and enslavement by Chinese cyber-scam operations in Cambodia. Arriving in the Southeast Asian country in September 2020, the 32-year-old dreamed of starting his own business. To learn the ropes, he offered to help manage a friend’s restaurant in the capital, Phnom Penh. His friend was from the same village in China. Lu had watched him become wealthy, buying a big house and living well. He wanted the same for himself and his family - his parents, wife and two-year-old son.

 

But in 2021 COVID-19 hit hard, and the restaurant closed. Lu was stranded in Cambodia without a job, unable to afford the escalating airfares and quarantine expenses to get him home. That is when a regular diner offered him a job he would quickly regret accepting.

 

“He said I just needed to analyse the securities market for clients and that the salary would be more than $1,500 a month. I thought I just needed to work for two months to go back to China,” Lu tells Al Jazeera with a somewhat bemused smile. When he arrived for his first day of work, Lu discovered it was a scam operation and, worse still, when he tried to leave, he was told he could not. The reason? He’d been sold to the company for $12,000 and was now theirs until he paid the money back in full.

 

read more https://www.aljazeera.com/features/longform/2022/8/11/meet-cambodia-cyber-slaves

 

[plus7]

Strange... I believe there are many people who will willingly cheat for salary.

But in the original article there are certain resort names in Cambodia...incredible.