The people who log on to work in an anonymous skyscraper in the centre of the Cambodian port city of Sihanoukville have one aim in mind — defrauding internet users around the world out of as much cash as they can.
Many start the day with a script designed to lure potential targets by promising love and riches, according to an 18-year-old Cambodian who works in the building and did not want his name published for fear of retaliation.
His script was in Italian and once he had successfully wooed a victim, he would pass them off to a “kill team”, he said. The system is known as “pig butchering”, where fraudsters cultivate victims’ trust over time before “butchering”, or swindling them.