The Lunacy Of Cryptomania

This is a follow-up post to the post Human Trafficking – The Hush Hush

While we covered a lot in that post about human trafficking, there is a side that was not covered, which is what this post is about.

In SE Asia, there are a number of boiler room call centers that’s sole purpose is to extract money from unsuspecting victims. This can be in the form of wire transfer or in most cases, crypto currency. These boiler room call centers are high pressure and often lead to physical and daily psychological abuse. There are countless stories from survivors that tell the tale of being hit with a cattle prod, starved, beaten and there have been many reported cases of victims “accidentally” falling off the roof if the expected daily quotas were not met.

One such boiler room call center is called “Chinatown” in the city of Sihanoukville, Cambodia. Sihanoukville, also known as Kampong Som, is a coastal city in Cambodia and the capital of Preah Sihanouk Province, at the tip of an elevated peninsula in the country’s south-west on the Gulf of Thailand.

It’s also the home of one of the largest slave labor camps, as pictured above and below.  In Chinatown, you will find among the noodle shops, convenience stores, barber shops; many of them with signage in Chinese, rather than the local Khmer; a series of compounds housing hundreds, if not thousands of trafficked victims, forced to grind out as many scams per minute as humanly possible.

You see, crypto currency is the preferred method of payment as it is almost impossible to trace and there is no “fraud protection” like what would be offered by a bank account or credit card.

On the other side of this operation is….You!. You are the recipient of the random text messages, emails, hijacked websites, etc. As everyone can attest, it is annoying at it’s least and highly burdensome at best.

The stark reminder that should be on everyone’s mind is, the trafficked victim on the other end of the line that it more than likely, fighting for their life, wondering “how in the hell did I get into this mess!?”

Maybe next time you get one of these text, you could reply “are you a trafficked victim?” While I’m very sure they line will go quiet from that point, you might also get a reply saying “yes” and they need money to get out of the jam they are in. Unfortunately, there is no way of knowing if they are lying to you or not. Best thing at that point would be to contact a victim trafficking organization, (links at the bottom of this writing) forwarding (or screen shots) to that organization. You never know, you might save a life.

For this writing, we are going to use a common scenario that is played-out in text messages. We’re going to pick a lovely young woman, who we shall call “Clair.” Without a doubt, she has a Japanese name – most certainly, her image has been spread all over the internet from dating sites to you name it – but for the sake of this post, Clair will do.

So you are sitting at a bar, watching a football game with a friend or maybe at a restaurant for an impromptu business meeting, when you get a text message from Clair. Clair says “Hi Sam, I’m Clair Chang, don’t you remember me?” I’m sure your first thought is going to be “hun? what?” But it goes on, as you reply that she has the wrong number, Clair apologizes. Then she awkwardly tries to continue the conversation. Instead of apologizing for the wrong number, she writes “can we be friends? lol.”

By this time, you are either curious or ready to slam your phone down as this has now turned in another pain in the ass. If you are the curious type, the conversation will continue with words like “where are from?, what do you do for work? etc.”

The end game and the fastest way to know is the fact that Clair doesn’t have much time, she is under heavy pressure to close the deal, much like you might be to close the deal at the dinner table you are sitting at. With that, in a few minutes, the word “money” will enter into the conversation. It could be for crypto investments or any number of other scenarios where there is dire need, urgency, to get money fast. “Close the deal!” her handlers bark.

It is very unfortunate that takes place in modern times, but again, we are here to talk about it.

Know someone that needs help, reach out to anyone of these organizations: