What lies behind the cryptocurrency scam: A world of imprisonment, abuse, and exploited labor

How many more victims are there in the terrifying “China Town”?
The abuse described by the people I interviewed is even more brutal than I imagined.
Those who fail to meet the fraudulent sales targets are beaten, starved, or sold from one fraudulent organization to another. One person said he saw someone being forcibly injected with methamphetamine to increase productivity. Several others said they witnessed people being killed and then made to look like suicides.
A 19-year-old girl from the Mekong Delta region of Vietnam told me, “I’m scared every day.” She was trapped in Cambodia and her family had to pay a ransom of about $3,400 to get her released.
Bilce Tan, a 41-year-old Malaysian man with a square face and an outgoing personality, told me that he responded to a job advertisement on the JobStreet website looking for “telemarketers.” The ad promised free round-trip tickets to Cambodia, a monthly salary of $1,000 to $2,000 plus bonuses, a “comfortable, cozy office and friendly colleagues,” and “attendance bonuses.”
During the online interview, the recruiter told him that the company was in the telecommunications business and hired him for a better business development position. He was told that the job location was Sihanoukville on the west coast of Cambodia and that the company would provide him with a dormitory near the office. In May 2022, he flew to Phnom Penh.
A middle-aged man in a black boxy car picked him up at the airport, and three other people got into the car at a gas station. Tan immediately sensed something was off when he tried to chat with them. “They were silent and told me to shut up,” he said. “I felt like a criminal and they were like police officers.”
By the time he arrived at the new workplace, it was already dark. The so-called “office” turned out to be a large building on a hilltop. It was very dark, and his visibility was limited, but he could still see that this was not a normal company. Streetlights illuminated the streets, and guards patrolled with batons and long guns. The buildings were surrounded by barbed wire fences and surveillance cameras were everywhere.
“This is my first time in Cambodia,” Tan said. “I thought, what the hell is this place?”
A manager was waiting for him at the entrance and took him to the dormitory. He spent an uneasy night there, which was not the kind of dormitory he had imagined. The next day, another manager took him to the office where he would work. There were ten employees in the room, each with two computer screens and ten mobile phones. Inside were fake accounts with photos of men or women, depending on the gender of the targeted victims. He had two fake identities, Lily and Angelina. He received scripts and a list of potential victims and underwent training on how to approach different types of targets, with single parents supposedly being the easiest to deceive.
“We would start with introductions,” Tan told me. “Then the other person would start telling their story.”
The fraud group taught him not to push the victims to download an app, but to subtly imply how much money they had made and wait for the victims to bring it up themselves, just like Vicky did to me. “If the person asks questions, that’s when we strike,” Tan said. “We would present the cryptocurrency website and teach them how to register.”
Like Vicky, Tan also said he would ask the victims to send him Tether. The boss used Tether to evade investigation. “It’s safer,” Tan told me. “We’re afraid that someone might trace our money laundering, and Tether cannot be traced.”
Tan didn’t want to deceive people, but if he didn’t meet the sales targets, he would be subjected to electric shocks, locked in a room for punishment, or even sold to another fraud organization.
Tan brought three mobile phones to Cambodia and hid them in the dormitory upon arrival. One night, he called his family, but somehow he was discovered. They pushed him down onto a chair, pointed a gun at his head, and beat him up. Then, they locked him in a closet and left him on the dark floor, with blood flowing from his legs, for several days. They wouldn’t let him go to the bathroom and only gave him plain rice, but he couldn’t eat. He said, “Breathing was difficult, and I felt dizzy.”
After being released, the manager warned him to take care of himself or face the consequences. Later, with the help of someone whose identity he didn’t want to reveal, he managed to escape. He asked me not to disclose the details to protect the identity of his lifesaver, but he said the escape involved hiding under a pile of cardboard boxes. He said, “It was like a kidnapping case in a Hollywood movie.” Once he escaped from the fraud base, he flew back to Malaysia. He only stayed in Cambodia for three weeks and considered himself lucky to have come out alive.
“I have to let the world know what happened,” Tan said. “We need more people to know about this and save the people inside.”
The severity of this issue is astonishing. Many victims are held captive in a giant complex called “China Town,” possibly totaling up to 6,000 people. Hacker Wu Mingxiao told me, “It’s one of the most terrifying places on Earth.” If each person has to reach a minimum threshold of defrauding $300 per day (a figure I heard from some victims), then this complex alone generates over $600 million in illegal profits annually.
Without cryptocurrency, this fraud complex cannot operate. Cryptocurrency enthusiasts often claim that anonymous payments that cannot be traced on the blockchain will somehow help the poor in the world. But it seems they haven’t bothered to understand what their technology is actually being used for. I had to see it for myself.
This article is excerpted from the book “Cryptocurrency Boom: A Epic Scam?” by Zeke Faux.
Author: Zeke Faux
Translator: Hui Fang Hong
Publisher: Zao An Finance
Publication Date: January 2025
Author’s Bio:
Zeke Faux is an investigative reporter for Bloomberg Businessweek and Bloomberg News, as well as a national fellow at New America.
He is known for his in-depth reporting on financial crimes, fraud, and exposing the dark side of the financial industry, helping the public understand the hidden risks and potential impacts in the complex modern economic system. He has received prestigious awards in the financial news industry, including the Gerald Loeb Award and the Silver Gavel Award from the American Bar Association, and has been nominated for the National Magazine Award.
He currently resides in Brooklyn with his wife and three children.