International Justice Mission (IJM) Australia said it was the first conviction in the fight against the new form of cyberscamming trafficking.
“We urge all governments across the Asia-Pacific to work together to address this and other forms of human trafficking,” IJM CEO Steve Baird said.
IJM said Indonesian workers were lured to Cambodia with promises of lucrative social media jobs.
But when they arrived, their passports were stolen and they were locked behind barbed wire and punished with beatings and electrocution if they failed to achieve “quotas” from scams against people in Australia and other countries.
The “work” involved contacting at least three foreign “targets” a day via social media messaging.
Most of these targets were rich men, including Australians, and the company told one worker, Rahim (not his real name), and his co-workers to pretend to be young women.
By building relationships and trust with their targets – using female models if photos or video calls were ever requested – they would invite targets to invest smaller, then larger amounts of money in fake investment schemes.
The scamming industry is estimated to be worth over $17.98 billion, with many of the thousands of workers themselves deceived into the work and held against their will, IJM claimed.
Three traffickers were sentenced to jail terms of between three and four years by an Indonesian court.
The key trafficker was also ordered to pay restitution to her victims.
The text message to look out for that could trick almost anyone
Rahim and his eight compatriots were rescued from the facility by Cambodian authorities, with support from IJM, in July last year.
Rahim had contacted the Indonesian embassy while another survivor had connected with IJM through a relative.
IJM and the embassy were then able to repatriate the nine survivors back to Batam in Indonesia.
“This case is highly significant in holding traffickers accountable,” Baird said.
“The way to start protecting Australians from being scammed is to protect vulnerable workers from being enslaved.”
