Taiwan’s police force is working with the FBI and US Department of Homeland Security to rescue trafficking victims in Cambodia. Police chief Huang Ming-chao says Thai authorities are also helping to root out criminal gangs profiting from the scheme.
It’s a significant development in Taiwan’s effort to save victims of a fake job scam that has seen hundreds of Taiwanese travel to Cambodia. Fraudsters lure people overseas with promises of well-paid jobs, before kidnapping them, extorting them, and forcing them to recruit more victims under threat of violence.
Police say almost 5,000 Taiwanese people are in Cambodia right now. Many of them traveled there in the last few months. So far, police have identified more than 420 suspected cases of trafficking, of which about 50 have been rescued. That leaves about 370 still trapped in Cambodia.
