Speaker 1: From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Christinamio.
Speaker 1: It's Monday, May twenty. Voters aren't convinced by the Treasurer's
Speaker 1: promise that the government's big spending budget, handed down last
Speaker 1: Tuesday won't push up inflation. That's according to new data
Speaker 1: from Newspoll. Less than a third of people believe they'll
Speaker 1: be better off even with energy subsidies, tax cuts and
Speaker 1: rent assistance. You can read our experts analysis of the
Speaker 1: latest Newspoll results at the Australian dot com dot au.
Speaker 1: Save your money. That's the recommendation of a high ranking
Speaker 1: United States Navy official, Gloria at Valdez, says the government's
Speaker 1: five billion dollar planned upgrades to the Australian Navy's aging
Speaker 1: Colins class submarines has never been attempted and it could
Speaker 1: leave us vulnerable if it doesn't work out. Australia's corporate
Speaker 1: regulator to notify thirty four thousand scam victims of their predicament.
Speaker 1: That's despite a heads up from international law enforcement agencies
Speaker 1: almost a year ago. It follows an investigation by The
Speaker 1: Australian which revealed weaknesses in our banking and government regulations
Speaker 1: make Australians easy targets for Southeast Asian scam factories. That's
Speaker 1: today's episode. A warning before we start. This episode contains
Speaker 1: mention of torture, physical violence and sexual exploitation. Not too
Speaker 1: long ago, the marriage of a South Australian public servant
Speaker 1: where calling John hit a rough patch. It was during
Speaker 1: that time that he received a Facebook friend request from
Speaker 1: an attractive Ukrainian woman named Vira. She told him she
Speaker 1: was recently single and living on the Sunshine Coast where
Speaker 1: she ran a business importing kid's clothing. After a couple
Speaker 1: of days, the conversation moved to WhatsApp. It's an encrypted
Speaker 1: messaging platform, meaning sensitive information can be exchanged more freely.
Speaker 1: Vera asked John if he had any interest in cryptocurrency.
Speaker 1: As it happened he did. He'd recently invested a bit
Speaker 1: of money on a legitimate crypto trading site called coinspot.
Speaker 1: With Vera's encouragement, John opened a new crypto trading account
Speaker 1: on a different website, and this time he went big.
Speaker 1: Within twenty days, he'd poured more than two hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollars into the scheme. All of the cash he and
Speaker 1: his wife had saved up over several years to buy
Speaker 1: a house. It was only when he tried to withdraw
Speaker 1: his money that John realized he'd been duped. We've all
Speaker 1: heard enough scam horror stories to know where this story ends.
Speaker 1: There was no Verra. She was concocted by a team
Speaker 1: of scammers running countless similar scams somewhere in Asia.
Speaker 2: That is still an active profile, and I can see
Speaker 2: from that profile it is still drawing new people in.
Speaker 1: Amanda Hodge is The Australian's Southeast Asia correspondent.
Speaker 3: So anyone out there, if you're in contact with Vera Pittskaya,
Speaker 3: I suggest you block her now because it's a real worry.
Speaker 1: It's called pig butchering by those in the business. Just
Speaker 1: like pigs being fattened for slaughter. Victims are slowly, expertly
Speaker 1: lured into a false sense of confidence by their new
Speaker 1: online love interest, then they go in for the kill.
Speaker 1: Southeast Asia is quickly becoming the pig butchering capital of
Speaker 1: the world, with countless scam factories targeting thousands of people
Speaker 1: online every year. To say it's a big problem would
Speaker 1: be an understatement. Experts estimate scamming is now the third
Speaker 1: biggest economy in the world, behind the United States and China,
Speaker 1: bringing in trillions of dollars every year, and Australians like
Speaker 1: John are increasingly being targeted because our banking and government
Speaker 1: regulations are easier to get around than those in place
Speaker 1: in the US or Europe. One form of scammer Amanda
Speaker 1: spoke to on a recent trip to King's Romans in
Speaker 1: Northern Laos made it crystal clear this is by design.
Speaker 4: Because the bearing system and the government they make us
Speaker 4: too easier than Europe. At the office, they said, like
Speaker 4: America is dumb and more change more expert to scam
Speaker 4: Australian because they are more smarter than America.
Speaker 1: If Australian authorities are aware of the extent of the problem,
Speaker 1: it's not clear what they're doing about it.
Speaker 2: My understanding is they haven't quite pivoted towards scamming it.
Speaker 2: They're so heavily focused on transnational drug syndicates, which is
Speaker 2: fair enough and has been the biggest issue in this
Speaker 2: region for a long time. But this is now the
Speaker 2: priority and I don't think they've been fast enough to pivot.
Speaker 3: That's my understanding. I wanted to check with them.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, the interview with the Australian Federal Police was canceled
Speaker 2: and they had a series of written questions they undertook
Speaker 2: to provide answers before publication, and they didn't. I was,
Speaker 2: to be honest, quite surprised and disappointed.
Speaker 1: The Australian's National Crime correspondent, David Murray is reporting today
Speaker 1: the Australian Securities and Investments Commission has been accused of
Speaker 1: dropping the ball on an international scam syndicate that cost
Speaker 1: Ossie's more than two hundred million dollars. A German police
Speaker 1: representative told Dave they alerted the corporate regulator to the
Speaker 1: scam in June of last year and they provided the name,
Speaker 1: contact details and financial losses of thirty four thousand Australians
Speaker 1: who fell victim to it, but ask has yet to
Speaker 1: make contact with any of them. It all begins with
Speaker 1: the handing back of Hong Kong and the famed gambling
Speaker 1: enclave of Macau to China.
Speaker 2: So it cracked down very hard on money laundering around
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen, and it also made an example of a
Speaker 2: couple of very big Chinese casino kingpins who are now
Speaker 2: in jail, so that those anti money laundering measures caused
Speaker 2: a flight of casinos and casino kingpins and crime syndicates
Speaker 2: out of Macau, and they were looking for more permissive
Speaker 2: environments and they found more than they needed in Southeast
Speaker 2: Asia exactly because of these underregulated special economic zones like
Speaker 2: the Golden Triangle. These are all notorious enclaves that have
Speaker 2: attracted huge amounts of Chinese money, a lot of it elicit,
Speaker 2: and of course the criminal syndicates behind those money flows
Speaker 2: are also now deeply embedded into those economies, into the
Speaker 2: politics of those areas as well.
Speaker 1: And then pandemic.
Speaker 2: So the pandemic forced these casinos online, and they had
Speaker 2: this fantastic new market, because so did everyone else.
Speaker 3: When the pandemic.
Speaker 2: Closed borders forced people to stay at home.
Speaker 3: What else was there to do?
Speaker 2: We all did the same thing, right, We had our
Speaker 2: work meetings, our social gatherings on zoom.
Speaker 3: These criminal syndicates.
Speaker 2: Found that they could reach so many other people as well.
Speaker 3: I think people were.
Speaker 2: Vulnerable because they felt lonely and maybe more amenable to
Speaker 2: those kind of strange, spontaneous approaches that most of us
Speaker 2: would normally be suspicious about.
Speaker 3: And so you know, here was this amazing new.
Speaker 2: Market, and they already had the tools to reach them
Speaker 2: through the online gambling networks, they had the money laundering networks.
Speaker 2: They suddenly had the cryptocurrency platforms, and tens of millions
Speaker 2: of fake cryptocurrency platforms have since been created just for
Speaker 2: this purpose, to be funnel money, not only as a
Speaker 2: sort of draw card for people who are interested in
Speaker 2: making quick money out of cryptocurrency, but as a way
Speaker 2: of laundering that money, you know, through the system, because
Speaker 2: once it's in a cryptocurrency account, it's gone.
Speaker 1: Many experts believe China is the only country with the
Speaker 1: resources and a regional influence to really tackle the so
Speaker 1: called scamdemic, and that puts Australian authorities in a tough spot.
Speaker 1: See the unique geopolitics of our region makes clamping down
Speaker 1: on cyber scams just that bit harder. Our relationship with
Speaker 1: China is out of the freezer, but it's not yet
Speaker 1: fully thawed, and tensions over China's rising influence in the
Speaker 1: Pacific means progress is slow. So what do we do.
Speaker 2: It's a really tricky question because the things I'm hearing
Speaker 2: from regional experts point to the fact that the geopolitics
Speaker 2: is really getting in the way of what needs to
Speaker 2: be an international cooperative effort.
Speaker 3: There's no other way to get around this, right.
Speaker 2: Cooperation between China, the US and Australia has in the
Speaker 2: past busted some of the biggest drug syndicates operating in
Speaker 2: Southeast Asia, but those days of cooperation are.
Speaker 3: Gone for the moment.
Speaker 2: And the other complication is that for China, this is
Speaker 2: a tricky one because it's embarrassing for China as well.
Speaker 2: Right China is doing quite a bit to protect its
Speaker 2: own citizens. It's deporting Chinese workers, whether they have been
Speaker 2: compelled or not, because it is putting pressure on countries
Speaker 2: like Me and Myra in particular, but it is not
Speaker 2: really doing anything about scam compounds. Once they stop targeting
Speaker 2: Chinese citizens and once they stop trafficking Chinese scam workers.
Speaker 2: China is the economic giant in the region. If it
Speaker 2: wanted to clamp down on this, it really could, but
Speaker 2: it's really only interested in making sure it doesn't hurt
Speaker 2: its own citizens right now. From China's perspective, Beijing's perspective,
Speaker 2: it probably doesn't see a lot of upside in troubling
Speaker 2: itself with trying to clap down for the benefit of
Speaker 2: Western powers that aren't playing ball.
Speaker 1: Coming up why the people on the other side of
Speaker 1: the scam can be victims too. Our foreign correspondents do
Speaker 1: this kind of in depth reporting and analysis every day,
Speaker 1: and subscribers to The Australian get unlimited access to their
Speaker 1: insights and expertise. Check us out at the Australian dot
Speaker 1: com dot au. We'll be back after this break. Policing
Speaker 1: international scams is a double edged sword because some of
Speaker 1: the people running the cons aren't there of their own
Speaker 1: free will. Many are trafficked into the so called scam
Speaker 1: factories by recruiters. They know they're soul dreams of well
Speaker 1: paid jobs at reputable companies, but the reality is more
Speaker 1: like a nightmare. New recruits to the compounds operating inside
Speaker 1: special economic zones dotted around Southeast Asia are indoctrinated through
Speaker 1: so called scam universities. It's a training program in which
Speaker 1: they're taught the ins and outs of the Australian banking
Speaker 1: system and culture. Things go downhill from there. What you're
Speaker 1: hearing is a scammer being viciously attacked for their on
Speaker 1: the job performance. Many scammers just like them are physically
Speaker 1: and financially trapped by their employers, who force them to
Speaker 1: work seven days a week and demand they pay debts
Speaker 1: in the thousands of dollars if they want to leave.
Speaker 1: Those who refuse to work are beaten, tortured, and raped.
Speaker 1: Some are electrocuted and others are sexually exploited. They're routinely
Speaker 1: deprived of food and sleep, sometimes both, and they're increasingly
Speaker 1: lured to the scam factories from as far away as
Speaker 1: South America, East Africa, and even Western Europe. More often
Speaker 1: than not, their passports are confiscated, making leaving virtually impossible.
Speaker 3: It's completely altered their lives. In many cases, it's ruined
Speaker 3: their lives.
Speaker 2: Young people in particular, who have finished their education, often
Speaker 2: university educations, quite fluent in English, computer literate, very smart
Speaker 2: young people, but facing unemployment rates within their age groups
Speaker 2: of twenty twenty five percent, no chance of getting a job,
Speaker 2: looking for a way out of what looks very much
Speaker 2: like a dead end, and so they too were incredibly vulnerable,
Speaker 2: particularly because these jobs sounded so great, they were paying
Speaker 2: so much more, and in sadly actually so many cases,
Speaker 2: the job prospects were being reinforced by people they knew
Speaker 2: who were recruiting them because they were getting a bonus
Speaker 2: and maybe that was their ticket out too, so it's
Speaker 2: just this terrible, vicious cycle.
Speaker 1: Amanda Hodge is The Australian's Southeast Asia correspondent. You can
Speaker 1: read her full investigation into the region's scam factories, as
Speaker 1: well as additional reporting by National Crime correspondent David Murray,
Speaker 1: right now at the Australian dot com dot au