Horror at scam call centre

Compiled by C. ARUNO, IYLIA MARSYA ISKANDAR and R. ARAVINTHAN

A MALAYSIAN man who was forced to work for a scam call centre in Thailand revealed that he was only released by his captors after family members paid a ransom of RM50,000, Sin Chew Daily reported.

The man in his 20s, who wanted to be known only as Ah Hong, warned young Malaysians not to fall for online job offers that sound too good to be true.

He recounted how he was fooled by an advertisement for an e-commerce job promising a salary of between 30,000 and 40,000 baht (RM3,784-RM5,046).

The former shopkeeper applied for the job and made arrangements to travel to Bangkok by land.

“In the beginning, I did not suspect anything was amiss when I reached Bangkok.

“However, I started to feel something was wrong as I was brought to Mae Sot (a district near the Thai-Myanmar border), even though I was told that I would be working in Bangkok,” he told reporters during a press conference in Kulim, Kedah, on Monday.

Ah Hong soon found out that he was to carry out online scams for a call centre that targeted people living in the United States and Europe.

Everyone working there was given a target and those who failed to achieve it would be punished.

“Punishment included being forced to run in the hot sun for two hours, beaten by sticks or asked to carry heavy bricks for long hours.

“If we made a mistake, we were tasered,” he said.

Ah Hong added that he was once punished by having to move bricks from 7am to 5pm, besides being beaten multiple times.

A typical working day, he said, would begin at midnight and end at 5pm.

“We were only allowed three to four hours of sleep a day, but I couldn’t fall asleep at all,” he said.

Unable to stand the torture and the extreme working conditions, Ah Hong pleaded to his captors to let him go.

They only allowed him to leave if his family members paid them RM50,000.

It was earlier reported that 12 Malaysians made it back home last week after being forced to work for a scam call centre in Myanmar.

The above articles are compiled from the vernacular newspapers (Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese and Tamil dailies). As such, stories are grouped according to the respective language/medium. Where a paragraph begins with a >, it denotes a separate news item.