The Butchers Shop
This 35 minute documentary, featuring Judah Tana, explains and graphically shows the disparity of the situation our team here in Thailand is working with.
Learn more by reading & watching from the links below
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Exclusive: Infiltrating Myanmar’s scam syndicates | 101 East Documentary
Southeast Asia’s cyberscam industry has trafficked at least 300,000 people from more than 60 countries, and stolen trillions of dollars from victims across the world. In this global exclusive, 101 East exposes how the industry is run with impunity. This two-year investigation reveals a highly organised network built on greed and forced criminality. As law enforcement authorities play catch-up, Chinese syndicates are evolving and setting up new operations around the world. 101 East goes undercover to expose the playbook of Myanmar’s notorious scam industry. -
Live news from Al Jazeera English - fast forward to minute 21 to see the piece on scamming and Judah Tana’s live interview:
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Episode 5: Judah Tana has rescued around 1,000 people from scammer farms. He shares how he got into this work and some of the shocking things he's witnessed. Plus, we hear Cattleya's story of escaping home to her family in the Philippines. Watch part 5 from the series here: (or look up Scammerland podcast on Spotify or Apple podcasts)
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The trafficking of individuals forced to work in overseas scam call centres run by cybercriminal syndicates – forced criminality – demands regional attention. Southeast Asian governments can do more to protect their citizens from such exploitation while improving victim assistance through proactive rescue and post-rescue support. Andrea Heng and Hairianto Diman find out what more can be done with Judah Hira Tana, International Director, Global Advance Projects
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"Unfortunately, it seems we're in a bit of a standstill," says Judah Tana, an Australian who runs an NGO which has for years been helping the victims of trafficking in the scam centres.
"We are hearing distressing information about the lack of sanitation and toilets. Many of the 260 who already came were screened for TB and tested positive. We are hearing from those who are still inside that people are coughing up blood. They are very happy that they have been liberated from the scam compounds, but our worry is that we're not engaging fast enough."
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Thousands of former workers who have been freed from telecom fraud centres on the Thai-Myanmar border are now stranded in makeshift camps. The labourers - from countries around the world - were lured to these centres by fake promises of good jobs. The armed militia groups who are now holding them have a very limited capacity to support so many people. One of them has said they have stopped freeing people from the compounds because they are not being moved to Thailand fast enough. The BBC understands that conditions in the camps are unsanitary, food barely sufficient, and many of the people are in poor health.
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Meet the Christians ensnared by cyberscamming and the ministries trying to stop it.
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Judah Tana speaks to Sky's Cordelia Lynch on the Thai-Myanmar border
As he drives me along a winding road by the river, he shows me these huge scam centres glowing with bright lights along the border.
Getting anyone out of a compound is hard. In a country wrestling with civil war, it is hugely complex.
There's a new scam centre on the border, known as Taichang or Mountain View. Built 18 months ago, it is described as "hell on earth" by those who have escaped from it.
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Wanted in China and sanctioned by the United Kingdom, tycoon She Zhijiang is languishing in a Thai jail. He’s been linked to scam sites involved in human trafficking and forced labour – but in a world-exclusive interview from behind bars, he tells 101 East he was a Chinese spy. Now, with Beijing pushing for his extradition, he says his knowledge of state secrets has put a target on his back. One of those secrets involves the identity of former Filipino mayor Alice Guo, who has been charged with money laundering, human trafficking and corruption in Manila.
101 East investigates.
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News report from Taiwan, featuring Judah Tana.
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Inside the global scamming factories. Adam Hegarty reports on the frightening way new A.I. technology is being used to steal billions of dollars from unsuspecting victims.
Synopsis: It’s positive news, kind of. In the last year, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, ASIC, has identified and shut down more than 7,300 phishing and investment scam websites. While it has stopped victims here losing millions, the scammers are still winning, raking in billions. They’re also coming up with more and more technically sophisticated ways to rip off their prey. As Adam Hegarty reports, much of this criminality is now headquartered in the failed state of Myanmar. There, trans-national crime bosses have resorted to human trafficking to amass a 120,000-strong workforce of scammers, who all day long are forced to con westerners out of their money.
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Read Article: ‘A global monster’: Myanmar-based cyber scams widen the net
“It’s a global monster. We need to attack it from all areas,” said Tana.
Judah Tana, founder and international director of Global Advance Project, a Thailand-based nonprofit, also described a rapidly globalising industry. He said many of the victims his organisation has supported since 2022 are from Africa, South and Southeast Asia, former Soviet countries and Brazil.
He and other advocates said that once people are trafficked into online criminality, the ways out are limited – especially in Myanmar, where most scamming operations are based in border zones controlled by business-oriented armed groups.
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Read Article (must be a WSJ subscriber)
Posing as ‘Alicia,’ This Man Scammed Hundreds Online. He Was Also a Victim. A multibillion-dollar cyberfraud industry operating out of Southeast Asia relies on forced labor and torture
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Watch now: Inside the scam farms enslaving workers | The Project
Miriam thought she had landed her dream job in Thailand, but when she landed, she was smuggled across the border to Myanmar, where she was trained to scam the vulnerable out of thousands. Director of Global Advance Projects Judah Tana tells us how they managed to get Miriam out.
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Watch the full documentary film here
They scam unsuspecting victims all across the world — but they are victims themselves. Thousands of people are trafficked worldwide into Myanmar's war-torn east, where they are forced to trick people in Europe, the US, and China into scam schemes. At KK Park, one of the most notorious facilities, those who refuse risk torture and even murder. Their only hope are a handful of aid workers trying to help them escape. DW's investigative unit goes to the borderlands of Thailand and Myanmar to track down the perpetrators behind this multi-million-euro operation. Along the way, they uncover a vast criminal network that leads to a notorious Chinese Triad boss.
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I Was Sold Into Slavery to Run Scams (Part 1) | What It Was Like
I Rescue People From Scammer Farms (Part 2) | What It Was Like
Last week, we covered the story of a woman sold into slavery to run scams. This week, we meet the man who rescued her. We're speaking with Judah Tana, who runs the NGO Global Advance Projects. He explains how he ended up at the epicenter of the world's scams industry and how the business is expanding.
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Listen to the conversation between Judah Tana and Luke Hunt:
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"I've had a victim, she was used particularly for developing AI technologies. For her to keep working, as a control, they used to bring people into her room and beat them even to death so that she would continue to work. She'd wake up one morning and just say; "I don't want to do this. You've got to let me go." And that brings someone in on her team and they'd beat them to death and say, that's your fault. Now keep working 16 hours a day, otherwise it'll happen to the next person.
And it became her duty to keep them alive."
READ the full article: Asia is witnessing one of history's largest trafficking events
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“Judah Tana, director of the NGO Global Advance Projects, said it wasn’t immediately obvious the buildings housed trafficked workers. “No one knew that hundreds of thousands of people were being brought in and trafficked and trapped inside these compounds,” he said. Click the link for the full interactive article
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When he left the compound, he was eventually picked up the director of the NGO Global Advance Projects, Judah Tana. While describing his experiences in the compound, he asked why authorities weren’t raiding the location.
Mr Tana replied, “Why doesn’t anyone rescue you? Because it’s the largest organised crime unit in the world”. News.com.au Read the full article here
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“Experts say even if people still missed the red flags or are unaware and found themselves scammed and trafficked, it is still not too late. They advised victims to reach out, create a ruckus, and draw attention to get the authorities involved, be it in Malaysia or Thailand.
Tana said victims should not give up.
“If you arrive in this town, Mae Sot, and you’re from another nation and you’re on a tourist visa being promised a job. Run. For. Your. Life.
Read the full article here“That’s the moment that they can still get out. That’s the moment … they’ve still got some freedom, that’s the moment they can still make the exit. But the moment they get on that boat (to Myanmar), they’re lost,” he said.” — Bernama, The Borneo Post Read the full article here
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“The way that they choose countries to traffic (victims), it isn’t based on the Asian region, it’s based on English education. It’s English education and Chinese language. They want Chinese translation and English (writers) to run online scams. Malaysians have strong English compared to other countries like Thailand, which has none,” said Judah Tana, founder and international executive officer of Australian charity Global Advance Projects.” - BERNAMA, BFokus Read the full article here
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Many of those working these cyberscam operations are lured from other countries with promises of legitimate jobs before being forced to work in slave-like conditions. Escapees have reported being beaten and tortured.
Judah Tana is the director of Global Advance Projects, a Thailand-based NGO which has aided hundreds of trafficking victims who have escaped from scam compounds in Myanmar.
Mr Tana said the crime syndicates had made AI research and development a priority since "day one" and were willing to go to great lengths to get the most advanced technology.
He said some scam compounds in Myanmar were using advanced face-swapping tech.
"It's not everywhere, but it is in some of the larger ones for sure, and they're just always moving to increase and get better," he told the ABC.
Among the people he had helped was a computer engineer whose sole job was AI development for the syndicates, he said.
Mr Tana and his associated partners aided her after she managed to slip away, despite being accompanied by security guards, during a visit to a coffee shop in northern Myanmar.
"She said [their technology] was more advanced than anything she had seen in the world, anything she had ever studied," he said.
Mr Tana said to motivate the woman, compound managers had brought people into the room and beaten them in front of her.
"It's a very, very, very twisted thing. But it's not an isolated case," he said.
ABC NEWS Australia Read the full article here
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