Inside the criminal world of Southeast Asia's scam compounds | Aeon Essays

"From his bed, he said he had sought work as a security guard in China, but was tricked and apparently kidnapped, transported to Cambodia, and then sold into one of the country's many fortified 'scam compounds' - facilities where workers labour around the clock to extract money from people online. When he resisted, Li was beaten and tortured, then passed from one scam operator to another."

"When he resisted, Li was beaten and tortured, then passed from one scam operator to another. He claimed his captors finally began to drain large quantities of his blood: seven times in half a year. In the hospital, he pointed weakly at an infusion bag above his head. That was the size of each extraction, he said. In online articles, journalists began to describe his case as that of the 'blood slave'."

Li Yayuanlun said he sought work as a security guard in China but was tricked, kidnapped, transported to Cambodia and sold into a fortified scam compound. He described beatings, repeated torture, and large quantities of blood taken from him seven times in six months, each extraction the size of an infusion bag. Social media outrage and attention from Chinese and Cambodian officials followed. Scam compounds have proliferated across Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, the Philippines and other nations, evolving from small apartment schemes into fortified facilities with guards, cameras, barbed wire and thousands of workers running romance and investment fraud.

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