Episode 2 - Inside the Shadows: Unveiling Scam Compounds with Cezary Podkul

In this episdoe of Stolen, A Podcast, host Erin West sits down with investigative journalist Cezary Podkul to delve into the dark world of international scam compounds. Cezary introduces himself, sharing his background in finance journalism and his deep dive into cybercrime after moving to Asia. The discussion focusses on the origins and operations of scam compounds in Southeast Asia, particularly in the Philippines, Cambodia, Myanmar, and Laos. Cezary recounts his first-hand experiences visiting these sites, the shocking conditions, and the unsettling levels of violence. Erin and Cezary cover the difficulty of fighting this criminal industry, emphasizing the need for public awareness and international cooperation. The episode also touches on the Philippines' efforts to dismantle these operations and highlights Cezary's upcoming book, 'The Big Trace,' which aims to provide an authoritative look into this pressing issue.

  EDITORS NOTE: We misspoke when we called the PAOCC the "Philippines Anti-Organized Crime Commission" but actually it is the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission of the Philippines.   00:00 Introduction and Guest Introduction` 01:41 Cezary Podkul's Background and Career 02:52 The Big Trace: Uncovering Scam Compounds 03:25 Discovering Scam Compounds: A Journalist's Journey 04:50 The Shocking Reality of Scam Compounds 07:47 Exploring Scam Compounds in the Philippines 10:02 Inside the Scam Compounds: A Detailed Look 11:14 The Dark Side of POGO Operations 12:40 The Violent Reality of Scam Compounds 17:20 Transforming a Crime Den into a Police Headquarters 25:04 A Survivor's Story: From Victim to Advocate 30:49 Investigating Bamban: A Unique Insight 32:38 Exploring the Scam Compound 33:06 Living Conditions in the Dormitories 35:44 Hierarchy and Lifestyle of the Bosses 36:27 Torture and Human Trafficking 38:50 The Raid and Its Aftermath 39:26 The Criminal Free Zones 42:02 Inside the Boss's Mansion 46:31 The Scale of Illicit Wealth 49:24 The Fight Against Scam Compounds 52:23 Conclusion and Call to Action   I giant thank you to our first sponsor: TRM Labs   TRM Labs - Blockchain Investigations & Risk Management -Investigate, monitor, and detect crypto and digital asset fraud and financial crime  

TRM Labs

[e-mail]   Cezary's upcoming book:

'The Big Trace'

Cezary’s companion newsletter for the book, which has updates on my travels:

The Big Trace Newsletter

Make Some Noise For Manilla

Cezary’s LinkedIn page for anyone who wants to connect or follow his work:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/cezarypodkul/

Operation Shamrock   #stolenapodcastwitherinwest #erinwest #operationshamrock #pigbutchering #cybercrime #organizedcrime #transnationalorganizedcrime #stolenpodcast #stolenapodcast #scams #fraud #TRM #TRMLabs #scamcompounds #bamban #paocc #phillippines #presidentialantiorganizedcrimecommissionofthephilippines #cezarypodkul #thebigtrace #propublica  

Episode Transcript

(00:59):
Hi friends.
Thank.
You for tuning in tostolen a podcast today.
I am so excited on our first episode witha guest we have, if there's anyone who is
deeper in the weeds about this problem,this international crisis, it is Cezary
Podkul, and I'm so glad that he was ableto take the time to meet with us today.

(01:20):
Today, I'm gonna let him introducehimself in a second, but what I will say
about him is that I have found a, gosh,I wanna call you a partner in crime, but
you're certainly not a partner in crime.
You're a partner in solving crime withme, and we've had the opportunity to
travel through Asia three times now.
And so I'm excited to talk toyou about our recent trip, but
can you introduce yourself?

(01:41):
Sure.
Thank you so much for having me on.
My name is Sari Poko.
I've been a journalist most of mycareer fi specifically focusing on
finance since I went to businessschool and did a very brief, had
a very brief stint on Wall Streetbefore I decided to go headlong into
journalism where I've been since 2008.
And most of that has been focusingon complex financial topics.
I've written about everythingfrom private equity and energy and

(02:04):
commodities to collateralized loanobligations, if you know what that is.
And then when I moved to Asia, I pivotedvery quickly to cyber crime, 'cause
that was a thing to write about here.
And that was sort of how I came acrossthe topic we're gonna talk about today.
And so, for most of my career, I've beendealing with these very complex and always
just fascinating stories that fascinatedme and none more so than this one.

(02:25):
And I've brought to all of myreporting a data-driven mindset.
Because I was also trained asa data journalist, so I like to
follow data, the money and thenalso just investigative skills.
Everything from filing FOIA requeststo doing in depth interviews, finding
people to talk to who may know somethingabout a very niche or particular topic.
So bringing all of those skills to bearfor a book on this particular subject.

(02:47):
And in fact, you are writing a book onthis particular subject, is that correct?
I am indeed.
It's called the Big Trace, and it'sgoing to trace the origins and the
impact of these scam compounds thathave arisen in Southeast Asia and
what they're doing to the worldand and what it takes to stop them.
So a little bit about in the first episodewe gave a little bit of context about how

(03:08):
I came to be so driven to understand thesescam compounds and so driven to start
looking for solutions to help victims,both in the United States and abroad.
And I'm just curious, how did you firstfind out about these scam compounds?
It was very organic.
Kind of one thing led to anotherto this big discovery really.

(03:29):
What happened was in 2021, I was doinga lot of reporting about unemployment
insurance fraud and a lot of Americanshad their identity stolen and then
bogus claims for unemployment insurancehad been filed in their names was
a big problem during the pandemic.
And I started looking at that.
I did a long in-depth story lookingat how that problem came about.
And then I became interested in arelated issue, which was identity theft.

(03:52):
And I was curious, why is it soeasy to steal data in Americans?
Why is it already a floating out there?
We think our social securitynumber is the secretive thing.
It's really not.
A cybersecurity expert demonstratedfor me how quickly it was how
easy he could get my address andmy social and all that stuff.
It's just floating around on the internet.
So I started looking at how thatcame about, and one of the leading
experts on identity theft justhappened to be in the region.

(04:14):
He had just gotten backin the United States.
After serving actually aprison sentence in the us.
He was captured and sentenced to about,served about seven years in the us
and he had just come back human now,and he had just started working for
the Vietnamese government as a whitehat hacker cybersecurity expert.
And I was talking to him for this.
He was helping me understand allthe ins and outs of this problem.

(04:34):
And how to fortify what, how companieswhat step companies need to take to
fortify their defenses against identitythieves and things of that nature.
And it, towards the end of that story,he mentioned to me, Hey, when you're
done with this, we should talk aboutsomething else that I've just discovered.
Like this is just really crazy.
And it was just this idea thatthere's entire scam compounds that
are being set up where people arebeing forced to defraud others.

(04:57):
And at first I didn't believe it.
I really thought that this was just,this can't possibly be, I really was
very skeptical at the beginning becauseI didn't think this could actually exist.
Like entire fortified compounds of guardsand people being forced to scam others.
But we started talking more about it.
He gave me some information tolook at, to try to verify it
myself and I did, and it was true.

(05:18):
And that was really how I came intothis topic was just by, hearing one
thing after another after another,and just led to this news tip and
then what's now been three yearsworth of reporting on this topic.
I love the origin story because Ithink we're going to see as this
podcast progresses over weeks, thatthere's a certain group of people

(05:38):
that are all intertwined, who arepart of trying to find solutions here.
And it's interesting to me thatyour introduction to this was from.
Hugh, who is a Vietnamese criminalthat was investigated by Secret
Service agent Matt O'Neill.
And Matt O'Neill is one of the foundersof Operation Shamrock, my nonprofit.

(06:03):
And so the two of them now afterHugh has served his prison term, have
become, go-to interview or ease on thecircuit because it's a fascinating tale
of how Hugh has turned his knowledgeinto knowledge for good these days.

(06:23):
Absolutely.
Yeah.
And he's super knowledgeable about it.
And almost from the get go, as soon ashe returned back to Vietnam, he wanted
to do something good to warn othersabout the dangers of cyber crime and help
people in United States and elsewhere.
And this was his way of doing.
It's amazing.
So I was also taken by what youdescribed when you said, when he

(06:45):
told you about this, you didn'teven believe it could be true.
Yeah.
It was just so shocking.
I just thought like, this can't, in thisday and age, like you can't possibly
have like an entire like slave campwith guards and barbed wire fences.
The way it was described in the firstphotos I saw were just very shocking.
And then the photos I saw went tothat exact compound in a city called
Snic Bill in Cambodia, and I saw itwith my own eyes and I thought, oh

(07:08):
yes, it's exactly as he described it.
It's exactly as in the photos that, hehad gotten from some people who had tried
to escape and were seeking his help.
And it was very much true.
It's so hard to believe.
I've been to Cambodia, I've seen sOakville and you and I together have seen
others and it really is still jaw droppingthat we can be standing just on the other

(07:29):
side of a river from a compound wherepeople inside are being forced to scam.
It's alarming to think about it thatexists in this day and age and the
conditions that allow it to existacross the region and the contrast that
we're seeing now in the Philippineswith what they're trying to do.
So it's just a, it's afascinating multifaceted story.
Well, I'm excited to talk toyou about the Philippines.

(07:49):
So, you today are sitting in Hong Kong.
I am back home in California,but just days ago we were both
in Manila and outside Manila.
So tell me a little bit about this trip.
The Philippines was high up on my listof countries to visit because it is the
only place in Southeast Asia where youcan actually go inside of a scam compound

(08:10):
and see the inside of these buildings,the rooms where it happens, be in the
room where it happens without beingtrapped in the room where it happens,
which is a very important distinctionthat I wanted to be mindful of.
That I think anyone would'cause safety is very important
when you're doing these trips.
There's four hotspots in ourregion in Southeast Asia.
There's of course Cambodia andthere's Laos the time Myanmar border,

(08:31):
specifically in the Myanmar side.
There's a ton of scam compounds thathave propped up in recent years.
And then in the Philippines, therehave been a lot of compounds as
well that have been built andstarted scam people in recent years.
You.
Of those four countries, the onlyone that's really done, large scale
operations to go in, clear them out,arrest people, hold 'em accountable,

(08:54):
seize land, do forfeiture proceedings,really try to hold everyone accountable
for what's happening is the Philippines.
And it's a really uniquesituation, what's happening there.
And it's a unique opportunity togo inside and see these places for
yourself and see just the scale ofit, the industrialization of it, the
tools they use, everything from thescripts, the computers, the gongs.
We can talk about all that.

(09:15):
It's all still there.
And the police are and the lawenforcement there is very welcoming
of foreign international media tocome in and see this because they
want people to understand what abig problem this is, to warn others.
And they want to seek the partnershipand cooperation of other law
enforcement to help them and to helptheir own citizens solve these crimes
and help them get their money back.
The Philippines is just a really uniqueplace to be and a unique window into this

(09:37):
problem that you cannot get anywhere else.
Yes, this week was the second time Ihad been to the Philippines to see this.
And on both occasions I was really amazedat the cooperativeness of the Philippine
government in giving us access, thatfew people in the world have seen, few
people in the world who have not beentrafficked there, have seen what it's

(09:59):
really like on the inside of a compound.
So tell me a little bitabout what you expected.
So let to be clear, we saw twodifferent compounds and let's
start with the one in Metro Manila.
What were you expectingbefore we went there?
I'd already gotten a little bit ofan indication that it was a, what's
unique about it is it's a formerscam compound by the Chinese, they

(10:21):
used to call it Sunshine Plaza.
The actual name of it was Nasda.
And now on the map on GoogleMaps, it's labeled as.
Former POGO torture chamber.
Imagine putting it into Google Mapsand telling you're a cab driver.
I'm going to the torture chamber.
It's quite surreal
time now for a quick breakto thank our sponsors.

(10:41):
Hey friends, I want to let youknow that our first ever sponsor
of stolen a podcast is TRM Labs.
And if you know anything about me, youwill not be surprised by this because I
have relied on TRM labs a number of timesin the past, and they have come forward
to provide training, to provide tools,and now to provide me with the assistance

(11:05):
to bring you this important podcast.
So thank you so much, TRM, I'm grateful.
Let me stop you for a sec. So thePhilippines uses the term pogo.
What does that mean?
So it stands for Philippine OffshoreGaming Operator, and it was a li
licensing regime set up a few yearsago under former President Deter to

(11:26):
basically create these online gamingbusinesses that would in theory be,
listed and licensed by the governmentregulated, and they would have run
online casino games, mainly targeting theChinese public where gambling is legal.
But that was the unique aspect ofthis that was just always so strange.
There were in a foreign countrytargeting gamblers in another country,

(11:47):
and mainly they were recruitingpeople from other countries.
So foreigners coming to a foreign countryto target gamblers in another, yet another
foreign country where gambling is illegal.
And so China was very unhappyabout this, as you can imagine.
Put a lot of pressure on the Philippinegovernment to shut this down.
And then add on top of that just allthe problems that then happened when you
bring in gambling businesses, gambling.

(12:07):
A attracts a lot of organized crime,and it certainly attracted a lot of
organized crime to the Philippines.
And very quickly these, supposedgambling operations were turned out
to be just really a cover for outrightonline fraud and cyber scams that
were being run outta the Philippineswith all of the adjacent criminality
of money laundering, prostitution,drug dealing human trafficking a lot

(12:27):
of human trafficking into these scamcenters to scam people around the world.
And so it became basically a wayfor the Philippines to become a host
country to a whole bunch of illicitinternational transnational crime.
And in fact, we heard about some reallyviolent crimes that were associated
with, including kidnapping and murder.
Yeah.
And you mentioned that the Philippinesone of the things that really struck

(12:50):
me was that they're trying to put aface on this so that they want the
public to understand just how violentand how terrible this industry was, so
that they understand the real pogo andso that people can't sugarcoat it and
say, no, it was economic development.
We were gonna get all this moneyif we had these gaming operators.
'cause we could get, gaming revenuesfrom them by collecting fees and whatnot.
Instead what they did is they puttogether a lot of materials to show

(13:11):
the public what was really happening.
And the one that really stuck out inmy mind was just flipping through the
magazine that the presidential antiorganized crime commission there in the
Philippines, which P-A-O-C-C, which isthe main body that's been really taking
the charge to dismantle these pogo.
They put together a magazine outliningsome of their accomplishments in
recent years and the raids thatthey've done and the results and what

(13:32):
they've seen and what they've learned.
And I'm just flipping through it and Ijust see a picture of a headless body.
And I'm like, wait a second.
What is that?
Where is this?
Yeah.
And we found a headlessbody in one of these.
They do murder people by the dozensthat the, from the chart summarizing the
numbers that they found in some of them.
And so this is a, this becamea really violent industry that
was doing all the wrong things.

(13:52):
And they, they didn'twant this on their soil.
So you've seen evidence of someof the lore that we've heard about
how violent this industry is.
Yeah.
And I think this is another one of thosesituations where I was hearing about
these things years ago and just gotconfirmation of it, this weekend, I think
I had heard someone mention to me yearsago that, yeah, in some cases they, they

(14:12):
chop off people's body parts sometimes.
Because this is very organized,violent, organized crime.
And I struggled to find instances,confirmed instances that have happened.
But here's a photo from thepolice that discovered the body.
I. Yes, it does happen in some instances.
And so, I think to me, that's one ofthe scariest aspects of doing this
reporting is that I heard so manythings along the way that I thought,

(14:34):
okay, I just, I, is this really true?
Could this actually be, andevery step of the way, I've found
sooner or later corroboration thatyes, this does in fact happen.
That for me has been thescariest part of all this.
It really is.
Because the first piece of thiswas understanding that there
were these massive compounds.
Yeah.
And the second step for me wasunderstanding that they were jam

(14:55):
packed with human trafficked workers.
And then the third was understandingthe level of violence that takes
place inside these compounds.
When we took this tour, which was justit's Monday for you, and we were there on
Wednesday and we were escorted around thefacility by a member of the P-A-O-C-C.
He was really clear with us aboutwhat went on inside this compound.

(15:19):
And so I wanted to hear from you alittle bit about what you understood.
Let's start from just how the scam itselfwas perpetrated within this compound.
It was very organized.
But to keep it simple for listeners,imagine an office building
where people rent office space.
That's basically what this was withthe exception that the activity of

(15:40):
the tenants is going to be industrialscale online scamming like rows
and rows of laptops, computers.
Tons of cell phones.
They see thousands and thousandsof cell phones, thousands
and thousands of computers.
All of those computers, all ofthose cell phones directed at
scamming people around the world.
A lot of their targets, fromwhat we understand were in China.
This was primarily an operationstaff by Chinese nationals.

(16:01):
They did have Filipinos there andpeople of other nationalities as well.
But it was a lot of the thetenants the workers were Chinese
and targeting the Chinese public.
They were just there every dayto basically squeeze as much
money outta 'em as possible.
If they made a big win, there was a gongthat they could ring, to say celebrate.
Yes.
We just scammed someoneout of a lot of money.
There was a smoking room wherethey could go and take cigarette

(16:23):
breaks and talk with the boss.
The, if you needed to take a breakif your team scored a really big
win, they could rent a KTV room.
That's, karaoke.
Sing some karaoke, have some drinks,and celebrate winning large sums.
It really was just an entire,kind of mini city, miniature city.
It was, built to accommodate the sort of.
Activity.
There was also a torture room if peoplemisbehaved didn't do as they were told.

(16:45):
And they said, you know what?
I don't wanna do this.
I really want to go home.
No, you can't go home.
They would take you there forbeatings or they could just beat you
publicly in front of the workers.
There's no rule that saysyou have to be beaten there.
And so it was one of the more violent,as the P-A-O-C-C described to it was one
of the more violent compounds in the areaand was, had a very notorious reputation.
But at the end of the day, it's in MetroManila, it's, it's an, were it not for

(17:06):
the foreboding look on the outside whereit looks like, what is this building?
Because it's very guarded off and itlooks like it's very highly secured.
Were it not for that, it would justlook like a normal office building,
and except that the office spaceis being rented to cyber criminals.
And fast forward to what it isnow, the government has taken
it over after doing the raid.
Spent many months now processingevidence and moving in there.

(17:29):
They forfeited the property,they forfeiture proceedings, they
were able to get access to it,and now it's their headquarters.
And so imagine it went from beingthis terrible crime dent to now being
the headquarters of the presidentialAnti Organized Crime Commission.
And it's really likea police headquarters.
Like you've now, like, law enforcementaccord like you've never seen before
because it's just this dystopianmix of, here's a torture chamber.

(17:50):
And, they're keeping some of theserelics around so people understand
when media and other people comein and other law enforcement, when
people come in to understand this,they want them to see this stuff.
So some of these exhibits are being.
Some of them are being kept thereas evidence to show people what
this industry really operates like.
And then some of it's just beingconverted into office space.
And then some of it is being convertedto useful social infrastructure.
I dunno about you Aaron, but forme the moment that stuck out from

(18:12):
my mind was downstairs on the firstfloor, they've converted a part of it
into a cafeteria for needy children.
And I, as I was walking out on Friday,I was walking past all these mothers of
kids and they're gonna the cafeteria toget their nutritious lunch free lunches.
And then as Marvin or God was leaving,we were leaving the kids' cafeteria,
he closed up the cafeteria and he said,okay, now let's go to the torture chamber.
So it's like we're leavinga kid's cafeteria and we're

(18:33):
gonna the torture chamber.
That gives you a sense of what a dystopianmix this office, it's like unlike any
other building you will ever go tothat's run by any other police force.
If there's, if you have any listeners whoare in law enforcement, they're interested
in getting an educational tour and.
Opening their eyes to what'sgoing on in the Philippines.
I cannot recommend stopping byand saying hi to the folks at
the P A O C C. It's really unlikeanything else I've ever seen.

(18:55):
Yeah, they were super welcoming.
They were, you said so many things thatI wanted to pick up on a little bit.
The first thing was that it's a lot like aregular office building, and That's true.
It's a block long building.
Yeah.
Five, six stories tall.
But what was interesting about itwas they told us that it was built
specifically for this purpose.
So the structure of the building is suchthat there were plenty of office rooms

(19:19):
and then there were plenty of dormitoryrooms where people were living four,
six to a room, and then in addition.
There were these specially furnishedrooms that you would never build in
any kind of office building, and thatwas the torture room that we saw.
The KTV operation was likenothing I've ever seen before.

(19:40):
It was fully like a nightclub, right?
It, I felt like I was in Las Vegas.
It really was amazing.
It had it had six different small rooms.
It had one really large room and it wasoutfitted in the way of a fancy nightclub.
And also we were able to see thatthere were places that were built out
for people who were working for theorganization or being forced to work for

(20:04):
the organization that had scored big andwere given opportunities to have treats.
Tell me a little bit aboutwhat you remember about that.
Oh yeah.
If you have some money you wannaspend, or there was a gaming room
so they could play games theycould of course go to the KTV room.
There was also a massageparlor on the first floor.
It was meant to create like a lifestyle.

(20:26):
And I think we, we've seen this in someother and I've heard about this from
my reporting on other scam compounds.
It's meant to turn scamming into alifestyle and to have you scom to it so
that whether you came there because youwanted to or didn't, whether you were
tricked into it, or you just thoughtthis is an easy way to make some money.
It's meant to present you with avery clear choice that this could

(20:50):
be a lifestyle that if you dothis, you can earn a lot of money.
You don't have to worry aboutthe people on the other end.
You're never gonna meet 'em,they will never meet you.
Most likely, you can earn a lot of money.
And then do what you want with that money.
There's a KTV, there's a, massage parlor,a gaming room, and they can take that
money and then eventually go on andwith your life and do something else.
Whether you'll actually be able to do thator not, whether you get trapped and told

(21:13):
no, you have to stay is another question.
But it's it is meant to blind peopleto the morality of it or the rather
the immorality of it and to embraceit to succumb to it and just, the
intoxicating power of money really.
Right?
It's meant to turn it into a lifestyle.
And if you embrace that lifestyle,you become a boss, you become one
of them and you become a higher upand you're on your own scan company.

(21:35):
It's meant to telegraph to youthat the world could be your oyster.
You could have KTV everynight of the week if you want.
You could have all, you could even go tothe compound, go gaming, you could set
up your own scam operation elsewhere.
It's just, it's meant to do that.
It's meant to create this pipelineof scammers and scam industry workers
that, and I think that's one of themost dangerous aspects of it, is that
success begets success in a very.

(21:56):
Dark way.
And it's not the kind of success wewant because the more people succumb to
it, decide, I do wanna be part of this.
The more of these scam gangs you'll havelooking for office space, renting it out.
And there's no shortage ofoffice space in Cambodia.
Maybe less so now in thePhilippines, but there's, a lot
of places for rent in Cambodia.
As sari, we've noticed in both locationsof compounds that we saw, KTV centers.

(22:19):
What is that?
They're just karaoke rooms, basically,karaoke tv, you have a giant TV screen out
there and with a book of songs that youcan choose from, and you just like, just
like you would any normal karaoke bar inNew York City or wherever, you just put
on a song you want and you sing and youdance you drink and you have a good time.
And the reason this is a big part ofthe culture there is because often

(22:40):
it's used to celebrate wins, right?
You scam a lot of money.
You take your team out there fordrinks and you celebrate and you.
You get them thinking that this is,this could be part of your lifestyle.
The more you scam, the more you winyou, the more you can enjoy karaoke.
And and it's also meant to givethem like, something that they
can enjoy in their off hours.
If they, of course, if they canafford it, it's something to break
up the monotony of life there.
And so it's something that's veryprevalent across Southeast Asia

(23:03):
and a lot of casino towns, gamblinghubs, and a lot of these, and scam
centers that are adjacent to that.
'cause scamming is agambling adjacent industry.
And they go hand in handacross Southeast Asia.
So you see these KTV roomsall over Southeast Asia.
Anywhere where there's a scam compound,there's usually one of two things
very close by a casino and a ktv.
Like, those are the very highdegree of correlation there.

(23:25):
And for that reason,
I think for me, just seeing the waysthat money could be spent also seemed
illicit to me that the opportunitiesto spend, you could spend on
gambling, you could spend on women.
It all seemed very almost appear appealingto the most base levels of humanity.

(23:45):
And it was really, yeah, to me there wasno joy or hope in that building at all.
And in fact, our guide toldus that it was made for evil.
It was pure evil.
And the way that they were able to Idon't know, almost a sua some of
the terribleness of what people weredoing was to say, oh, if you do well,
you can engage in this other stuff.
That kind of takes your mindoff how bad it is as well.

(24:07):
Yeah.
And that's, and you see howthat's common in other scam
compounds that I've reported on.
Yeah.
That, it's so terrible.
People have a few hours off a day,those few hours, they give them
access to these sorts of activities.
And then eventually maybe somepeople decide, you know what?
I'm just gonna embrace it.
And then they become part of the system.
And that's, I think the moral choicethat people have to face if they're stuck
inside these compounds or if they'rethere, how much they wanna embrace it

(24:29):
and become part of this evil industry.
Yeah,
time now for a quick breakto thank our sponsors.
Hey friends.
I just wanna thank TRM Labs, ourfirst ever sponsor of the podcast.
I love their message.
They're building a safer financialsystem for billions of people, and that's

(24:50):
exactly what we are trying to do as well.
Create a safer situation for peoplewho are going about their daily lives
and engaging with digital media.
While we were there, we had a reallyunique opportunity, and that was
to talk to a woman who had formerlybeen held against her will at KK

(25:14):
Park, which I know is one of theplaces that you've studied deeply.
As you've worked on your book, canyou tell me what it was like to you to
have the opportunity to talk to someonewho'd been inside KK Park every time?
I talk to someone and I hear a reallyawful story of life inside these scam

(25:34):
compounds, I think to myself, okay,that's it, that's the worst one.
And there's nothing worse than this.
I can't imagine that someone couldhave a worse experience than with this
person, usually through tears, tearingup, crying which is absolutely normal.
And I, I feel so sorry forthem when I hear those stories.
And it's just the well of empathyyou have to do when you have, when

(25:56):
you do these interviews and the,and then I know that I'm talking to
people about, some of the worst, ifnot the worst moments of their life.
And then when they're done, Ithink there's nothing worse.
And then a story like that comes along.
She really just had one of themost awful experiences, just
made all the more awful, as Erin,because you talked to her as well.
I think the thing that reallystruck out to me was just how her

(26:17):
own, one of her own family members.
Her sister was the one who hadrecruited her there and she was
dealing with the pain of that.
Through all the suffering for six,seven months that she had there,
knowing every moment she was there,that was because her sister had, was
the one who had tricked her into goingthere and having to live with that.
And then to find the energyto forgive her sister.
I think that was the other end partof it that would really resonated with

(26:38):
me just finding the power to forgiveand move on and make sense of it all
and to digest all those feelings.
And I think on the other end you have aperson who then is there working for the,
she's now working for the presidentialanti organized crime Commission.
And I think that for me was themost hopeful thing that she's
now there providing socialservices to other victims.
She knows what they've been through, she'swalked in their shoes quite literally.

(27:02):
She's been there.
She knows what it feels like and she'sthere to help them get through it and
see the light at the end of the tunneland live that next life that they
will have after the compound because.
It's not gonna define them forever.
And she's there to help them figureout the, how to move on and to make
sense of life after the compound.
And I think that, for me, wasthe most powerful and uplifting
and positive part of her story.

(27:23):
That she took this incredibly awful, oneof the most awful experiences I've heard
about inside of any of these compounds.
And she's now channeling it into somethingincredibly positive that'll make a
difference for other young people andto help warn them against going there.
And so I think that's, and that's one ofthe things that's, those are the things
I look for is just those rays of hope.
And that's one of the other reasons Iwent to the Philippines as I was reporting

(27:44):
the book, because the Philippines wasthis ray of sunshine in our region.
A stark contrast with what wesee in Cambodia and Myanmar.
The Philippines is just doing some reallypositive steps like this, like putting
her in a position in which she is to helpother victims working with the P-A-O-C-C,
working for the government to help others.
And I think those are somereally innovative steps.

(28:06):
Progressive forward thinking thatthe government is showing there to
really help tackle this problem.
And not only to get rid of it, but alsoto help the human trafficking victims.
And I think that's an equallyimportant element of this.
It's not like when people come home, lifeis great and everything's back to normal.
It's not.
When people come home from thesescam compounds, they're dealing
with a whole set of problems.
Everything from psychologicaltrauma to financial struggles,

(28:29):
arguments with family.
She only, the fabric of life is tornup and she's been through all that
and she's had to forgive and move onand deal with this incredible conflict
in her own family of what happened.
And so her story was just both.
Just it turned so sad and so,awful, but then also so uplifting
and so inspiring for me.
So it was just this amazing mix ofemotions that you just feel as you get

(28:52):
to know her and get to know her story.
One of the things that people may not knowabout how this human trafficking works is
that there are frequently people that areinside the compound that want out, and the
only way out is to bring someone else in.
And that is what happened with thisyoung woman, is that her sister
essentially led her to believe thatshe was coming for a different job.

(29:15):
And that enabled the sister to get out.
And then our friend was stuck thereand really left to process that.
Her sister put her in thatposition, which was awful.
What I thought was so hopeful about thewhole thing, and that we heard a number
of times from the P-A-O-C-C is thatthey really want these stories told.
They don't want thesestories to go unreported.

(29:39):
And I was so touched that we hadinterviewed her at the end of the first
day and on the second day, and as we'veconcluded that interview, she said,
ask if I can go with you guys tomorrow.
I wanna be there with you.
Yeah.
And so it was a real treatand let's get into it now, day
two was a real jaw dropper.
And she was there we call her, Susan.

(30:00):
Susan was there to walk throughit with us and to answer all
the questions that we had.
And to, one of the things that reallystruck us about this compound, and Cesar
I'd like you to go further into it,is that it was left very much intact
with notebooks, with documents, withscripts, with all kinds of artifacts

(30:20):
left as they were, which really enabledus to get an opportunity to understand
exactly who was being targeted.
I looked through notebooks that had namesof Irish people and where they lived in
Ireland and what their phone numbers were.
And it was astonishing to haveaccess to this level of detail
about how this work was done.
And then to have Susan by my side to say,oh, yeah, I kept a notebook like that too.

(30:44):
This is what this means in the notebook.
So.
Cesari.
Tell us a little bit about Bombonand why we wanted to go there.
Yeah we wanted to go there.
This is such a unique place becauseit is the only place where you can
not only go in and see those rowsof notebooks and how the workers

(31:05):
lived and how the workers work.
Every, you can see their dormrooms, you can see their canteen.
You can see the rows and rows and rowsof desks with rows and rows and rows
of stacks and papers, like a crimescene, like a frozen crime scene.
On the day of the raid, the only thingthat's gone are the computers now.
'cause obviously they'reprocessing that evidence.
The notebooks are there,the scamming scripts.
You can flip through them and we.
Just a very unique team.
'cause it was you and me and Anta,and we had the P-A-O-C-C there.

(31:27):
And also we had Susan, a formertrafficking victim who kept exactly
these sorts of notebooks and wasusing exactly these sorts of scripts
and could give us a really uniqueperspective into this is how it works.
And then we also invited a Chineseinvestigative journalist Pearl to join us.
And it was great because shewas able to spot things in those
notebooks that none of us would beable to understand in the signage.
There's, a lot of the lang the signage onthe walls and everywhere is in Chinese.

(31:50):
So we had a really unique teamgoing through and analyzing this.
The thing that struck me as I wasgoing through it was just, again the
industrialized nature of it and howbig it was and how efficient it was.
And how many of these rose,room after room after room of.
Desk after desk after desk, rows ofdesks, made specifically for scamming,
entire dormitories where you couldfit easily one building can house

(32:13):
hundreds of probably thousands ofpeople altogether and in expansion mode.
This was still rated when itwas still in construction.
And on the other side of it,you see these gigantic villas.
I was thinking about it.
'cause in Hong Kong we have very smallapartments and I'm pretty sure that just
one room in that villa that we saw, whichhoused my entire apartment and all my
belongings, one room, they were huge.
They were cavernous.

(32:33):
Massive.
Massive.
Cavernous a villa doesn't evendescribe, they're not villas.
They're mansions.
They're mansions.
Huge humongous.
Yeah.
With several stories and ba basementsand tunnel, A tunnel network connecting
them in case there's a raid, right?
I mean it was just a jaw dropping.
And I think the thing that makesthis place even more unique.
Is that it's the only place where youcan actually go inside of a home for the

(32:54):
ultimate boss, the guy who was in chargeof really running, this place and making
sure that it profits and he's protectedand he's got this little umpire going.
His house is still there.
Let's break it down because I wannado a deep dive into that house too.
Sure.
Let's start off with living conditions.
So you and I take for granted, we knowwhat living conditions are like in a
scam compound, but a lot of people haveno idea, like this is news to them.

(33:17):
A scam compound.
How many buildings werewe talking about here?
I haven't counted the number of thenumber of buildings in there yet.
I'm gonna look at some drone footage.
They told me 35.
Does that sound about right?
Yeah, that sounds right.
Yeah, that sounds about,I was a few dozen, yeah.
Is what I was gonna go with.
Yeah, exactly.
A few dozen 36.
Yeah.
So tell me about the dormitory buildings.
What were those like besidesbeing ridiculously hot?

(33:39):
We were there on a hundred degreeday, and I have to tell you that
the P-A-O-C-C guides, they said,oh, you guys are really tough.
'cause a lot of the foreignjournalists won't spend more
than four or five minutes inside.
It's that hot.
So we stuck it out for, I'd say agood 15 to 20 inside the dormitory.
But Cesary, go ahead anddescribe those for me.
Yeah.
I'm from Hong Kong, so it wasn't an issue.
Going up and down and all the stairsis really unique opportunity, I

(34:03):
imagine like a. Low end collegedormitory, I would say, where you have
bunk beds, where wooden bunk beds.
I think I, I'd say they had atleast two, if not three door room.
So maybe six people who might sleepshare one, one one room lockers
where they could put their stuffaway, some personal belongings.
And then, on the walls, justannouncement boards, just telling

(34:24):
people, shifts, schedules, therewas a sign on one of 'em saying,
disinfection at the boss, big boss villa.
Every, I forget which day.
Every Wednesday.
Every Wednesday, we're gonnadisinfect that every, oh,
every, it was every Wednesday.
Okay.
Mm-hmm.
Oh yes.
So every Wednesday, and I'm surethat, and I think there was a cleaning
schedule, so I think the workers wouldtake shifts, helping out with that.
So it was just very organized, justbasically bunk bed, brooms with
bunk beds, lockers put their stuffaway, a canteen downstairs that

(34:48):
they can go get food, Chinese food.
It was still full of food.
Yes.
Rotting food.
Yes.
The smell was awful.
Yeah.
But yes, it was, they still had,everything was left like the
day it was really except again,they took the computers and
other evidence to, to process.
It was very much.
Imagine like a low end college dormitory.
That, that's veryorganized and many stories.
I think they had that building.
The dormitory had sevenbuildings there, sorry, seven.

(35:11):
Seven floors to a building.
Seven stories.
Yep.
And there were several of them.
And so you can imagine that, eachone of those buildings, can easily
house, probably over a hundred people.
And then, you're talking aboutseveral of those structures and many
scamming companies then downstairs,you walk out, hang a left, you go
down a little side street and oryou're at work basically, right?
So you, you're not far away from workand you're there and it's just this

(35:33):
giant open room with rows of desksand you're at work and you get to it
and you're working what, from whatwe usually understand, it's like.
14, 16 hour days,sometimes 18 hours longer.
And so that's the lifestyle.
And when you're done, you get your one,one day off a month, you can go party
spend your money at KTV or whateverother amenities they have there.
It's a scamming campus.
And then keep mind that there'sa very much a caste system.

(35:56):
There's areas where the workers cango and the things that they can do.
And then there's the separate walledoff area for the bosses with the bosses
villa and the Olympic size swimming pool.
That's off act, gated away.
Gated away.
Yeah, exactly.
So there's a separation there too, right?
Between the upper management, the peoplewho run the place and their lifestyle
versus what the workers are gonna enjoy.

(36:16):
For sure.
And on the worker side, therewas a basketball court and on the
other side there was this beautifulswimming pool that was available
to the big boss and the bosses.
One of the things that I noticed was I.There was also another journalist that
was present with us, and that journalistasked where the torture room was, if
there was one there, and he said no.

(36:37):
All the torture took place in thedormitory rooms that they would
beat them in their own rooms.
And I could recognize some of thoserooms from videos I'd seen of torture
that had taken place inside there.
And the level of torture is graphicactually in the first compound,
we were able to talk to a humantrafficked victim who showed us a

(36:58):
photograph of how he had been injuredduring the course of his time there.
And it really, again, for a data-drivenjournalist like you, it must have been
an important moment to see photographicevidence that a lot of this did happen.
Yeah.
And I talked to him a little bit moreafterwards and, and I, these stories just.

(37:20):
Always, it get worse.
It's just, it's afterwards.
He mentioned to me that they actuallyalso rubbed salt in his wounds.
He didn't mention that when we spoke.
Oh God.
Literally.
Oh yeah, yeah.
Literally.
So after we're done, they were done.
His skin literally popped open.
'cause they had beatenhim with a baseball bat.
So he had wound open wounds andthen Oh, they put salt in them.
Oh God.
They put salt in them.
Yeah.
Because that's, and I think that'sthe reason why people should really,

(37:45):
it's when there's just no restrictionson when you, lemme take a step back.
I think the reason places likeBaban matter and why people should
care about them is because whatthese criminals are trying to
establish are free criminal zones.
Basically places where they can dowhatever they want and it's hands off.
And you'll notice that Bamba isnext to the Bamba Municipal Hall

(38:06):
because we should mention to yourlisteners the story of Bamba.
It's, it was a ma it's a small town, abouttwo hours drive north of Manila, Metro
Manila, where a local mayor, Alice Guhad basically been involved in inviting
this industry and helping to facilitatethe construction of this huge pogo
operation, this huge scamming compound.

(38:27):
She was very much involved in it, ingetting it set up, making sure that
the people who were building theselarge scale scamming the buildings and
facilities that they'll be protected.
And they wouldn't, have to fearthat they'd be shut down because
you don't build this sort of thingwith all, you don't pour all that
concrete, bring all that construction.
You don't do it unless you knowyou're there for the long term.
You don't do it unlessyou know you're protected.
You don't do it unless you know thatno one's gonna come knocking on our

(38:49):
door and tell you the gig is up.
That's exactly what happened becausethere was a human trafficking victim who
filed a who, one person, a Vietnameseman who had escaped, and then another
man in Malaysian who had soughtout help for his EMBA through his
embassy to say he was trapped there.
And the P-A-O-C-C took that lead, theyinvestigated and they shared it with
other law enforcement and they foundenough probable cause to do a raid.
And he, they did thatraid in March of 2024.

(39:11):
And that's when they found all this stuff.
And since then, except for theevidence, they took out the process.
It's been frozen in time sitting there.
The entire campus is goingthrough forfeiture proceedings.
So it's giving us this insightinto what these places are actually
like and what they operate as.
And I think the thing that I keepcoming back to is that what they're
trying to set up is these freecriminal zones, basically similar to

(39:34):
kind of like a free port where you.
It's similar in that, exceptlike it's a free criminal zone
where we can do whatever we want'cause no one's gonna touch us.
And when you create those types ofthings that it just invites all sorts
of human depravity because all sortsof things that to me and you, a normal
person would be like a bad idea.
Like rubbing salt in someone else's wound.
That's a good idea.
Then that just becomes, becauseno one's gonna stop them.

(39:56):
And if they believe that, no one's gonnacome in there and stop them and prevent
them from doing that and arrest them andhold them accountable and put 'em in jail.
These are the things that happen.
And so that's why I think as I'vebeen trying to understand the depth
of the PR and the, these stories I'vebeen trying to make sense of them.
I think that's what I keep coming back tois that human beings, we need boundaries.
There needs to be law enforcement,there needs to be rules, there

(40:16):
needs to be people who will holdthe them accountable and say, no
this can't be, we have to stop this.
And I think that's where Ikeep coming back to why the
Philippines is such a unique place.
Because they were right at the prepprecipice, like where there were
so many of these scam compoundsbeing built and they were so
brazen because Baban was brazen.
Bamba was really brazen.
These were gigantic, luxurious villasbeing built in a scam conference to,

(40:37):
to invite bosses to set up their ownshops and do this sorts of things
being built there for the long term.
It was really brazen.
And it got shut down and it gotshut down just in the nick of time.
And I think that's the thing thatmakes us so unique that it actually
did get shut down and they wereable to put a limit a stop to this.
And so for all those reasons, I just thinkit's what I keep coming back to, this is
just a really terrible inhumane form ofcyber crime that has to be, that people

(41:03):
need to figure out a way to tackle it.
Because if you don't, all sorts ofterrible things that you and I would
never do, become good ideas for them.
If no one's gonna tell them no,and no one's gonna stop them,
so someone needs to stop them.
And really all credit goes to P-A-O-C-Cand the Philippines law enforcement for
having, been able to do that thus far.
And this is an example of whathappens when things get stopped.
And what we're seeing is this unchecked.

(41:25):
Growth industry in Cambodiaand in Myanmar and in Laos.
And the stories that we've heardfrom inside those scam facilities
are horrendous and horrific violenceand criminalization going on inside.
So that's part of what motivatesme is to know that, okay, now
we've proven, we've seen it.

(41:46):
We know that it exists.
We know that this is how it really isinside these compounds, and yet there are
still dozens upon dozens of these thatare in operation today using all these
same techniques and levels of violence.
So for me, what really struck medeeply is I had an experience at

(42:08):
Bamban that I have never had in mylife, and that is the ability to walk
through the home of my adversary.
This was a incredibly unique situation inthat the big boss lives right on campus.
He lives, of course over a beautiful fenceand inside an amazing four or five story

(42:30):
building with rooftop with a basement.
And we were able to walk through thathome, open drawers, see what was inside,
and for me to see the level of consumptionand level of high-end merchandise and
massive spending displays of wealth.

(42:52):
Really was a gut punch when I think ofthe victims that I speak to every single
day who have lost all of their money tothink that it's going into a Chanel bag
for the big boss's wife, or some expensiveliquor that the big boss is drinking.
But Cesari.
Tell me a little bit about thebasement and what we found down there.
I wanna know about thespecial room for the liquor.

(43:14):
I wanna know about the panic room.
I wanna know about the tunnels.
Tell me about that.
Yeah, it's like one of those Netflix showswhere you go inside rich people's homes.
It makes you jealous.
Like, oh, I wish I had that kind of home.
cause it's so luxurious and everything.
Except like you're just disgusted byit in some way because, it's all funded
by illicit money and it's funded bystolen funds and and money laundering

(43:35):
money that's been launder throughgambling operations and everything.
In some way you cringe as you seethis luxury as you're going through it.
You remember there was an officespace there on the first floor where
there was, of course not one, but Ithink two money counting machines.
Yep.
And we went down to the basement.
Yeah.
He had his own liquor storage room.
And then there was a separate roomfor storing really high-end fancy.

(43:56):
Tees.
There was a billiard room, a very, andall of this cavernous, just very large.
You could hear, if you sit, echo echo,it would all bounce off the walls.
He had his, of course, his own KTV roomwith its own stage so he could get up
on stage and sing with the microphone.
It was just the largest, it was just huge.
I couldn't get over justhow big everything was.
And then eventually we got to the inthe liquor room, maybe we just saw these

(44:19):
jars that were sitting there at thebottom, and we were looking through it.
It looks like there werejust bones in a jar.
And we were looking at this.
And Pearl, who was there with us.
Chinese investigate journalist she lookedat this and she told us what this was.
This was Tiger Bone Wine.
So this is, obviously something you don'tdrink unless you're, criminally rich.
Because the, we're talking aboutlike endangered species this

(44:40):
is just really jaw dropping.
That was just sitting there.
It was just, I thinkfour, four jars of it.
That have been left there.
So these are the types of thingsyou find inside of these places.
And then there was a panic roomjust where people could congregate
in case there was an emergency.
And then next that panic room, you,you see that there was a door to open
up and go through a tunnel in caseyou needed to escape to go elsewhere.

(45:02):
And there's an entireunderground tunnel system there.
And then we went to another villawhere we could see from the other
end there was a panic room andanother villa that connects to that.
These buildings were connected.
And so this was very well thoughtout and just very unbelievable.
It's just the whole thing whenyou're going through it, you just
don't know how to process it.
And it's still in construction.
This was one of probably overa dozen villas that were gonna
be built in this fashion.
This is the main one that's open,that, that got built because

(45:25):
he was already living there.
And he could actually see what itwas like in its finished state.
This is gonna be a whole little,village of these types of, buildings.
For whoever wanted to set up shop and bea big boss and rent office space and run
a scam company there, as far as we know.
So it's.
They caught this and they stopped thisin the nick of time before more of these
could be inhabited and more people therecould be doing this types of activity.

(45:48):
Yeah.
And their level of securitywas impressive too.
Just looking at some of the doors and theywere almost vault like in how they closed.
Yeah.
We saw their armored cars that theyhad specially built out cars that
were bulletproof and it was hard totake in the amount of money that had
been spent in the construction theitems there, and then the construction

(46:12):
of this whole massive compound.
It was a huge operation.
Yeah.
There's an underlying philosophy toit, which is everything is a price.
Everything can be bought, thesecurity, the materials, there's
nothing they can't afford.
The thing that I really struggled withexplaining to people and I also struggle
to understand myself, is just, I.
The vast, and vast amounts of illicitmoney sloshing around Southeast

(46:36):
Asia right now looking for a home.
Yeah.
It is just in the billions.
It, and, one data point that wegot early on that got everyone's
attention we're like, wow, was thatSingapore money laundering case?
That resulted in over $2 billionof assets being frozen in seized.
And there was like all kinds of luxuryitems, safes full of cash, lots of
cryptocurrencies, luxurious properties,luxury cars, handbags and all that stuff.

(46:58):
That's just a small sample givesyou an idea of what the, this
money's going into and how muchof it there is looking for a home.
And one of the things about Bamban.
Bamban was one way that money founda home was like being reinvested
into the proceeds of crime to buildmore of these places, to make more
of that money and then more ofthat money be looking for a home.
We're looking at just thishuge wealth transfer, really

(47:18):
just this huge accumulation ofillicit wealth in Southeast Asia.
None of this money isdoing anyone any good.
No, I think it says a lot when you thinkof the location that Bamban is, it's
a pretty idyllic, pastoral small town.
There are businesses there,but around the compound itself
is a beautiful nature setting.

(47:40):
It's not built up.
Yeah.
These are the biggest buildings for miles.
And then in the office of the bigboss, you have two bill counters.
It's so out of place and I thinkthat speaks to the amount of wealth
that's being transferred with insidethe walls of that building and taken
into the walls of that building.
So Cezary, I had to go backto California, but you had

(48:01):
another day in the Philippines.
Tell me about that.
So yeah, it was very eyeopening.
We spent the morning just goingthrough some more of these
scam notebooks from inside.
What does a scam industry worker do with,like, you give 'em a notebook and these
notebooks have these dystopian covers.
They have these like motivationalphrases on them, like seize
the day, that kind of thing.

(48:21):
And then you open them up and they'rejust filled with just rows and
rows of, looks like in some casesthey're rewriting phrases over and
over again to memorize a script.
In some cases, they're taking notes oflike the character or the persona that
they're putting on so that they knowwho they are and what they're doing.
And they don't keep track of whatthey, what they should be saying,
what persona they should beputting on when they talk to.

(48:42):
They call 'em clients whoare the fraud targets.
They call them clients, unfortunately.
And then there's actual informationabout the clients, the people
that they are targeting.
And so you see, you mentioned yousaw some Irish name, Irish names.
There's people, we noticed a lotof Chinese people's names, some
bank accounts written in there.
It's meant to help you basically keeptrack of your day in the same way that

(49:02):
you and I might have a notebook, likeI have one for the big trace, so I can
keep track of my book and what am I,like plan my trips, my reporting trips.
I have a notebook to plan my reportingtrips for the big trace, right?
They have that acceptance to plan howto defraud, who am I defrauding next?
That kind of thing.
It was very eye-opening to actually seewhat goes on, like how it works and how
they organize their day and how muchwork and how labor intensive it is.

(49:24):
And then in the afternoon I wentback to the P-A-O-C-C and I sat
down with Winston Cassio, who's ourspokesperson, a very thoughtful guy.
He and I connected because he he usedto be a philosophy lecturer and I
was a philosophy major in college.
And so we had a verythoughtful, deep discussion.
And it was one point in the conversationthat I wanted to highlight for you and
your listeners, which is you gave me avery surprising answer to a question to

(49:47):
which I thought I would know the answer,which is I asked them, what do you
need from the international community?
What can the internationalcommunity do to help you?
Because they've had these,this string of successes.
They've braided now they'vehad 18 of these raids.
They've taken down baban,they're prosecuting criminals,
they're trying to forfeit land.
They're doing all this stuff.
And I asked them.
What do you need?
And I was expecting him tosay something like, they need,

(50:07):
financial support and training.
And of course that would be great'cause they do need more training.
They do need more support.
More than that.
He said, we need some noise.
Make some noise.
We need the noise.
We need the noise.
And.
What he meant by that was the thing thatenabled them to have this, to be able to
have the political cover and the supportto go in there and actually do this,

(50:28):
amazing inter-agency collaboration andcooperation to go in there with multiple
agencies to go do these raids and toexecute one after another after another.
And to line up all those pieces toprocess, that evidence and do all that.
It was just the public support, peoplebeing fed up with pocos and people in
the Philippines saying Enough is enough.
And it being a popular, that popularsupport, being a popular idea, yes,

(50:50):
let's get rid of this industry.
And people, ordinary peoplesaying, yes, we don't want this.
And hearings in the house in thePhilippines, politicians paying
attention, lawmakers, the public,it being in the mentioned in the
press and the media stories, havinginternational media coming in and covering
all this, all of that helped them.
All of that gave 'em the conditions theyneeded to be able to do more of this and
to have the support that they needed.

(51:12):
To do more of this.
And it also reminded me ofhow fragile that is, right?
Because once that disappears,if another administration comes
in and says, you know what?
We're done with this.
It is a very fragile it's a very notablesuccess that they've had now, and it's
great and it should be celebrated,but I was also struck by how fragile
it is and how it could disappear ifthat support, if that noise vanishes.
And so I thought it was verypoignant when he said, we need noise.

(51:35):
And I think that'smaybe what you're doing.
And it's kind of empoweringbecause the noise is something
all of us can do, right?
You can make noise.
I can make noise.
Anyone, you know onLinkedIn can make noise.
And we can all play our part to makea little bit of noise for, so that
the P-A-O-C-C and Manila knows, yes,people are still talking about this.
We still need to be here.
We still need to be doing this.
My parting thought to listenersbe you make some noise.

(51:57):
For the guys Manila, so many peoplewill say, Hey, what can I do?
I wanna be part of this.
What can I do?
And just really spreadingthe word about this exists.
This is happening.
The Philippines is breaking theirs up.
But this is still very much happeningright this minute in Cambodia,
in Myanmar, in Laos, in Dubai.
And so let's make some noise

(52:23):
time now for a quick breakto thank our sponsors.
Thank you so much to our sponsor.
TRM, if you don't know what they do, TRMand its blockchain analytics capability is
what makes it possible for law enforcementto be able to trace these funds back
to the bad actors and recover them.

(52:44):
We couldn't do the work we do for victimswithout TRM labs, so I'm so grateful
that they decided to sponsor our podcast.
So looking forward, I wanna talka little bit more about your book.
If you could just tell us a little bitabout what the book is going to be like.
The idea would just be to givepeople the authoritative look

(53:07):
into all aspects of this industry.
Everything that we've been justdiscussing, what gave rise to
this industry, how it operatesall the different elements of it
from people getting pricked intothese scams and losing their money.
What happens with the money people onthe other end, what their lives are like.
I want to give people the clearest,most authoritative look into

(53:28):
every aspect of this industry.
How it came about and howit operates and its impact.
Because what I want people to understandis just how dangerous this has become.
And why more needs tobe done to stop this?
Because if it isn't stopped,you're gonna have more being built.
We don't need more babas in this world.
We need our schools,universities, military bases.
Those are some of the things thatthe we were discussing at the

(53:49):
P-A-O-C-C asked them, what areyou gonna do with these buildings?
They said, they would like toturn Bamban into a military base.
And I think the Department of Defensehas already in the Philippines, has
already expressed interest in that.
One of the others, Togo's, theywanna turn into a university.
The one in Pasay City Manila hasalready turned into police headquarters.
They wanna be building that.
They wanna be building positive socialinfrastructure, making a positive impact,
rather than having scam compounds there.

(54:10):
And so I think to me, again,the Philippines is just this
ray of sunshine in the region.
That gives us an exampleof what could be done.
Because I think one of thethings I wanna accomplish in the
book is I don't wanna expose.
Idea what the potential solutionscould be and what needs to be done,
in terms of what law enforcement cando differently to tackle this problem.

(54:30):
How they can, working withvictims, just touching on all that.
So it's not, here's a bigfat problem, go solve it.
I want to also look atsome of the solutions.
And I think that's what broughtme in part to the Philippines.
This was, as I was counting, this wasmy 15th reporting trip for the book.
It's been a lot of travel.
Mm-hmm.
I still have a few trips left anda lot of writing to do, but it's
been, yeah, it's been just, a laborof love and it's just been quite

(54:53):
literally blood, sweat and tears.
'cause when I was at time Anmar border,cut myself pretty bad, going through the
bushes, trying to take photographs places.
So it's been really a ton of work,but I'm glad I'm doing it and I'm
glad my publisher gave me whichis a little brown and company.
I'm glad they gave 'em the opportunityto work on this, and I'm glad that
they feel as passionate as I doabout this project, and I wanna bring
it to a big global audience and toreally get as many people as possible

(55:14):
to understand just how, what a.
Dangerous threat.
This is because, again if you don'tstop this now you're gonna have
more of these bas being built.
More people getting traffic intothese and more people getting scammed
and it just creates this unvirtuous.
And so that's why I wanna really connectall of the dots as I can as I've been
doing, for most of my career, becauseagain, I started off as a financial
investigative journalist and thendoing a lot of data driven journalism.

(55:37):
So it's, I'm bringing to it a, verymuch a, a journalistic mindset, from
following the money, following data.
I've been doing my own crypto tracingfor the book too, to follow the
money myself to actually I got acryptocurrency training course that
I completed when I first started.
And I've been doing my own tracing,following the money, asking questions
off of that, pivoting to then doing opensource research, going to these places,

(55:58):
talking to the right people, analyzingdocuments in many different languages.
So it's just been a ton of work,but I'm hoping I to bring it all
together so that people have it allin one place and they can really
understand the threat that this poses.
And so that's the vision for it andcannot wait to bring it to you all.
So thank you so muchfor your interest in it.
I cannot wait to read the Big Trace,and when can we expect it, Cesar?

(56:21):
I, up to me, you would've beenyesterday working as fast as possible.
Finished manuscript in the next fewmonths, and then after that it's just
gonna be some time to edit and whatnot.
But it'll be coming outsoon and have a newsletter.
It's called The Big Tracing Newsletter,so your listeners can sign up for that.
We can live a, leave alink in the show notes.
If you sign up for that, you'll getupdates on all my reporting trips
because I usually like to reflecton what I've seen and, just helps

(56:43):
me internal because there's a.
These trips are just so fast andthere's so much that happens.
You learn so much andthey're so emotional.
And that I like to sit downand digest it and write a few
reflections on what I've learned.
I send those out in my newsletters andthen once we, the book is done and it's,
ready to go and people can read it.
If you're on the newsletter, you'llbe the first to know when it'll
be coming out, and then, if I'llbe doing speaking engagements at
bookstore and something like that.

(57:04):
It'd be great to connect with youand I would love to build a community
around this for people who arepassionate about this and care about
it and stay in touch with them.
Because one of the things thatreally helped me early on and I
can't stress this enough, was withjust by connecting to so many people
who really cared about this and.
Building a community of people whoreally cared about this, who cared
enough to educate me and helped mepoint to others who could educate me

(57:25):
and cure my ignorance about all of this.
Because again, I came into it notbelieving that this could even be a thing.
But yes, it was this huge,dangerous solicit industry.
And I would love to keep that going, kindof build a community around this, people
who really care and follow this issue.
So, if you're interested in it,please, sign up for the newsletter
and definitely I'll keep youposted on when the book is ready.
Great.
We'll put that website in the shownotes, but one of the things you

(57:46):
said about not wanting to just exposeit, but to also offer solutions is
something that I've been about sincethe beginning, so I feel that as well.
And that's what you canexpect from this podcast.
Stolen.
We will be talking about howtens of billions, hundreds of
billions of dollars have beenstolen from the rest of the world.
And have gone into the hands of reallybad actors and we will be talking

(58:11):
to more experts like Sari, and we'llbe talking to some people who've
had their lives stolen from them.
So Sari, I'm sure we willbe talking to you again.
You and I have other trips to discussand lots of other topics to discuss.
So thank you so much for joining me today.
I'm really grateful.
We'll see you next time.
Absolutely.
Thanks so much.
Pleasure.