Electric Shocks and Tied Crucifixion-Style: The Life of a Scam-Mill Worker

The job advertisement promised a fat salary in a modern metropolis.

Fisher, a 27-year-old Ethiopian who had studied electrical engineering, convinced his father to sell the family farmland — where generations had grown mangoes, avocados and teff, an ancient grain — to pay for a ticket to Bangkok.

The car ride to his new workplace, supposedly a glitzy computer hub in Thailand, took about eight hours. Mr. Fisher, who is being identified by a nickname because of security concerns, began to worry. Along the way, he was given a fried chicken leg, garlicky and good, a meal he remembers because of what happened next.

As night fell, Mr. Fisher was hustled down a riverbank to a small skiff. A few pulls of the oars later, he landed in a new country, Myanmar. War-torn and fractured by rival armed groups, Myanmar is now the crucible of a cyberfraud industry run by Chinese crime syndicates that uses trafficked people from around the world to swindle tens of billions of dollars from other people around the world.

Exhausted from the journey, Mr. Fisher was marched to a tower block freshly painted in white. In a large room filled with other Ethiopians and a few people from Laos, he was given a desktop computer and ordered to start a new career as a scammer.

Mr. Fisher, who had a government job back in Ethiopia, balked. His rebellion earned him time in a torture chamber, he said, bound for more than a day in a crucifixion pose, dirty water dumped on him when he veered close to sleep. Witnesses and other scam-mill victims said they saw or experienced the same abuse.