International Justice Mission research has uncovered evidence linking hundreds of financially-motivated child sextortion cases to forced scamming compounds in Southeast Asia, where human trafficking victims are coerced into perpetrating online fraud schemes that sometimes pivot to sexual extortion when the initial scams fail
3 key takeaways:
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- The connection is detectable but required massive data analysis — IJM analyzed more than 1 million CyberTipline reports and matched them with mobile device data, ultimately linking sextortion reports to forced scamming sites in Cambodia, Myanmar, and Laos.
- Forced scamming compounds exploit trafficking victims to commit crimes — Human trafficking victims are lured by fake job ads, then confined in guarded compounds where they’re coerced into running various online scams.
- Coordinated multi-stakeholder action is urgently needed — Electronic service providers must improve account creation safeguards and detection methods, while law enforcement needs to better coordinate cross-border investigations.
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New research by International Justice Mission (IJM) links hundreds of financially-motivated child sextortion reports to scam compounds in Cambodia, Myanmar, and Laos. Indeed, the research shows that significant effort was required to detect these linkages as IJM analyzed more than 1 million CyberTipline reports in the “Online Enticement” category from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).
“Our research provides the first clear evidence of this likely link, but to understand the true scale of the problem, there needs to be further urgent investigation into this troubling nexus by law enforcement, tech companies, and global governments,” says Eric Heintz, Senior Criminal Analyst at IJM.
Because forced scamming compounds now blend labor trafficking, high-volume online fraud, and financially-motivated child sextortion, it becomes critical that electronic service providers (ESPs) must harden account creation and improve detection of signals indicative of online fraud and sextortion. In addition, law enforcement must better coordinate their efforts at cross-border investigations and distinguish trafficked workers from criminal organizers.
Links between compound scamming and child sextortion
To illustrate the details of how these two fast-moving crime waves are converging online, forced scamming occurs when victims are trafficked into guarded compounds across Cambodia, Myanmar, and Laos, after responding to fake job-ads. These trafficked victims then are coerced into defrauding targets online as part of forced scams. These schemes employ deceit or trickery to defraud the online targets, often using scripted approaches, fake personas, or impersonation to elicit money or sensitive information.
You can read the IJM report A Potential Nexus Between Forced Scamming and the Financially-Motivated Sextortion of Children here
The types of scams include romance, investment, crypto, fake loans, and impersonation scams, all of which are carried out from inside guarded compounds. Many times, trafficking victims endure confinement and abuse as part of being forced to perpetrate these scams on others.
These human trafficking victims are also trained on psychological manipulation tactics to lure in potential victims, including children in some instances, although it is not evident that children are being intentionally targeted.
Within some of the scam operations, if trafficking victims fail to elicit the desired outcome, such as an investment in a cryptocurrency fraud scheme, they are forced to pivot to sexualized chat and a request for images or a video call. The forced labor victims then use the collected sexual images to blackmail the scam target for money under threat of exposure. Since 2022, reports of such financially-motivated sextortion have surged globally and have disproportionately affected boys and young men, with devastating psychological harm including documented suicides.
Forced scamming is not just a fraud trend; rather, it is a human rights crisis that collides with child protection, cybercrime, and organized criminal groups across Southeast Asia and beyond.
Researchers from IJM combined large-scale ESP platform reports with mobile ad-tech telemetry to trace overlap between child sextortion and forced scamming. They analyzed nearly 1.2 million reports from NCMEC that covered 3.17 million IP addresses and paired them with more than 300 million advertiser ID rows, which included mobile devices used in these locations, the device’s latitude and longitude, and the IP address and date and timestamp (UTC) of an internet connection by the device. These were collected from 44 confirmed scam sites in Cambodia, Myanmar, and Laos, resulting in 493 reports tied to devices at 40 sites in these countries.
The strongest links centered in hotspots in Cambodia and Myanmar, and some IP addresses traced back to internet service providers in Thailand. This reflected cross-border routing and service reliance and occurred when activity originated in neighboring countries or special economic zones.
Required actions to protect children
Coordinated action by platforms and law enforcement is essential to expose, disrupt, and prosecute the intertwined machinery of forced scamming and financially-motivated child sextortion. ESPs, such as social media networks, messaging apps, email providers, cloud services, and dating platforms, submit CyberTipline Reports to NCMEC when they detect suspected child sexual exploitation. While this is helpful, more efforts are required, which include:
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- Cross-referencing account creation and activity with known scam hotspots and scripted patterns
- Including precise timestamps, IP addresses, and geolocation context in CyberTipline submissions
- Flagging and disrupting account creation that originates from suspicious infrastructure, beyond simple VPN indicators
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At the same time, further law enforcement action is needed to improve disruption and prosecution of these networks, including:
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- Examining sextortion cases for signs of forced scamming, which may include scripts, crypto addresses, or investment lures
- Studying evidence for indicators of sextortion as a tactic, such as the use of sexually explicit scripts or imagery
- Considering that some suspects are themselves trafficked victims who have been coerced into scam operations
- Using advertiser ID data and timestamp matching to pinpoint devices and compounds
- Devising ways to coordinate cross-border law enforcement actions in hotspot countries, known scam regions, and local jurisdictions.
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Forced scamming is not just a fraud trend; rather, it is a human rights crisis that collides with child protection, cybercrime, and organized criminal groups across Southeast Asia and beyond.
The nexus between forced scamming and financially-motivated sextortion of children is detectable — as demonstrated by IJM’s new research. Now is the time for action among ESP platforms, law enforcement, and NGOs to align data and coordinate cross-border responses to better identify devices, compounds, and networks in real time.
You can learn more about how organizations can reduce and mitigate child exploitation in the TR Institute’s human rights crime resource center
