{"id":247700,"date":"2025-02-27T06:47:23","date_gmt":"2025-02-27T06:47:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/27\/electric-shocks-and-tied-crucifixion-style-the-life-of-a-scam-mill-worker\/"},"modified":"2025-02-27T06:47:23","modified_gmt":"2025-02-27T06:47:23","slug":"electric-shocks-and-tied-crucifixion-style-the-life-of-a-scam-mill-worker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/27\/electric-shocks-and-tied-crucifixion-style-the-life-of-a-scam-mill-worker\/","title":{"rendered":"Electric Shocks and Tied Crucifixion-Style: The Life of a Scam-Mill Worker"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/02\/26\/multimedia\/myanmar-scam-victim-lctj\/myanmar-scam-victim-lctj-facebookJumbo.jpg?ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"Electric Shocks and Tied Crucifixion-Style: The Life of a Scam-Mill Worker\" title=\"Electric Shocks and Tied Crucifixion-Style: The Life of a Scam-Mill Worker\" \/><\/div><p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-0\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The job advertisement promised a fat salary in a modern metropolis.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Fisher, a 27-year-old Ethiopian who had studied electrical engineering, convinced his father to sell the family farmland \u2014 where generations had grown mangoes, avocados and teff, an ancient grain \u2014 to pay for a ticket to Bangkok.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The car ride to his new workplace, supposedly a glitzy computer hub in Thailand, took about eight hours. Mr. Fisher, who is being identified by a nickname because of security concerns, began to worry. Along the way, he was given a fried chicken leg, garlicky and good, a meal he remembers because of what happened next.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">As night fell, Mr. Fisher was hustled down a riverbank to a small skiff. A few pulls of the oars later, he landed in a new country, Myanmar. War-torn and fractured by rival armed groups, Myanmar is now the crucible of a cyberfraud industry run by Chinese crime syndicates that uses trafficked people from around the world to swindle tens of billions of dollars from other people around the world.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Exhausted from the journey, Mr. Fisher was marched to a tower block freshly painted in white. In a large room filled with other Ethiopians and a few people from Laos, he was given a desktop computer and ordered to start a new career as a scammer.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-1\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Fisher, who had a government job back in Ethiopia, balked. His rebellion earned him time in a torture chamber, he said, bound for more than a day in a crucifixion pose, dirty water dumped on him when he veered close to sleep. Witnesses and other scam-mill victims said they saw or experienced the same abuse.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-2\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Broken, Mr. Fisher said he submitted to the work. His con used TikTok shopping, targeting marks in Iraq, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cWe are stealing from the world,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Fisher said he had been promised a $2,000 monthly salary for good work. But he could never hit the target: $10,000 a month in successful scams. For failing, he endured electric shocks from a baton. Or he had to perform frog jumps or push-ups with four Chinese bosses pushing on him. Aid groups said others rescued from the same scam compound also reported such mistreatment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cAll I did was scam and sleep,\u201d Mr. Fisher said, of his 18-hour shifts.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The workers were fed only rice \u2014 except for one day when a guard told them that a Chinese holiday meant a treat: a chunk of chicken. Mr. Fisher\u2019s body wasted away. He was often sick.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-3\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Everything in the compound, he said, was in Chinese, down to the clocks, which were set to Beijing time, and the red lanterns hanging from the fancy building where the Chinese bosses lived. Some of the scam parks in Myanmar\u2019s borderlands are as big as cities, their high rises overshadowing the more modest development on the Thai side.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In mid-February, after eight months of enslavement, Mr. Fisher was rescued from the scam mill. He was among thousands released in a series of raids this month, mostly Chinese but also Pakistanis, Malaysians and Kenyans, among many other nationalities. Mr. Fisher was given chicken, the first protein he had savored in months.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">He is now in a military camp in Thailand, awaiting a repatriation that he dreads because he has no earnings to take back to Ethiopia with him. Selling the family land was a waste, he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cPlease, I don\u2019t want to return to my homeland,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I don\u2019t want to go back to the place where they tortured me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-798hid etfikam0\">Selam Gebrekidan<!-- --> contributed reporting from Hong Kong.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/02\/27\/world\/asia\/scam-center-torture-abuse.html\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The job advertisement promised a fat salary in a modern metropolis. Fisher, a 27-year-old Ethiopian who had studied electrical engineering, convinced his father to sell the family farmland \u2014 where generations had grown mangoes, avocados and teff, an ancient grain \u2014 to pay for a ticket to Bangkok. The car ride to his new workplace, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":247701,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/02\/26\/multimedia\/myanmar-scam-victim-lctj\/myanmar-scam-victim-lctj-facebookJumbo.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[168,145221,192049,4178,65056,170110,76,25244,61457,176523,192050,51660,6342,6425,4995],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247700"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247700"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247700\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":247702,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247700\/revisions\/247702"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/247701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}