I Lost Hope The African Jobseekers Tricked into Cyberslavery

Within hours of landing in Bangkok from Nairobi last December to start a job as a customer service agent, Duncan Okindo knew something was wrong. He had sold his cattle, borrowed money and used his savings to pay a recruitment agency 200,000 Kenyan shillings (£1,150).

- Fiona Kelliher Carlos Mureithi Nairobi Michael Savage

“I felt it would be good to go outside [the country] and look for money to take care of my family,” says Okindo, 26. “I’d tried hard to get a job in Kenya, but life here had pushed me to the wall.”

But when a van picked up Okindo and six other Kenyans at the airport, the driver collected their passports and told Thai officials they were tourists. After hours of driving, they were herded into a boat for a river crossing.

The men were taken to Myanmar, where Okindo found himself inside a walled compound guarded by rebel militia. He was set to work every day for the next three months, forced to send thousands of messages from fake social media profiles, posing as a rich American investor to swindle US property agents into cryptocurrency scams.