The UN ’s migration agency is warning that criminal networks have been trafficking hundreds of thousands of people – many of them educated English speakers – to work in online scam centres , and the caseload is growing. “We’re seeing so many more of these cases emerge right now,” IOM Director General Amy Pope told reporters in Geneva on Tuesday. Huge scam centres employing as many as 300,000 workers across Myanmar Cambodia and Laos have emerged to deploy online schemes to defraud often older individuals in the West. “People trapped in scam compounds are ⁠victims of trafficking, forced ⁠to commit crimes through violence, threats and coercion,” said Pope, who formerly worked as a prosecutor of human trafficking cases. “We must work together ‌to support survivors, stop traffickers and close the gaps these criminal networks exploit.”