‘Torture inside these compounds is extreme’: W5 investigates cryptocurrency scams targeting Canadians

W5 speaks with former U.S. prosecutor Erin West whose dedicated her life to investigating cryptocurrency fraud and exposing the massive operations behind it.

In part one of an investigation into cryptocurrency scams targeting Canadians, W5 met an Ontario woman who lost $1.7 million and a man from P.E.I. who also lost his life savings of $600,000 to a similar cryptocurrency fraud.

In part two, W5 looks further into who is making these scam calls and why they appear so ready, willing, and able to scam Canadians out of their life savings.

• Read part one of W5’s series on crypto scams

A former prosecutor from southern California, who now dedicates her life to investigating cryptocurrency fraud, said many of the scammers committing these crimes are also victims themselves, who have been human trafficked to scam call centre compounds in Southeast Asia and are forced to commit these crimes, or risk being beaten and tortured.

‘A generation’s worth of wealth’

Erin West, a former U.S. prosecutor from San Jose who started Operation Shamrock, a nonprofit group that travels the world investigating scam call centres fleecing Americans and Canadians of their money, explained how something like this could happen.

“What they have done is created the most lucrative business that they have ever created and it involves stealing a generation’s worth of wealth from the rest of the world,” West told CTV News.

West travelled to two cyber fraud compounds in the Philippines within the past year and said after viewing the buildings and rooms inside compounds, she was shocked by the amount of scamming that was going on.

Videos on West’s Operation Shamrock website shows her in the Philippines touring the compounds stating, “there are more than 35 buildings designed for the sole purpose of scamming.”

West also entered the call centre rooms where the scam calls were being made from.

‘Stealing billions of dollars’

“It’s eerie to be in rooms that I know are responsible for stealing billions of dollars,” she said.

While some may find it impossible to believe victims could lose so much money to investment scams, West said, the constant calling, contact and grooming by the scammers takes its toll.

“There is significant contact between victims and scammers and in the middle of this, they feel there is something special and different and they have a real opportunity. They’ve been sold a dream and want that dream,” said West.

What Canadians may not know, she said, is that many of the people making the scam phone calls are victims too, adding they may be forced to make scam calls 16 hours a day, and if they don’t or try to escape, they’re beaten and tortured.

An Amnesty International investigation identified more than 50 scamming compounds in Cambodia and documented the abuse workers suffered if they refused to scam people.

One survivor of the compounds, a woman who was not identified for her safety, told Amnesty International that, “I only know if you don’t work and do as they tell you get beaten.”

West said that is what drives the scammers to make the calls to try and fleece Canadians and the money that is taken in goes to organized crime groups.

“The torture inside these compounds is extreme and that’s how you motivate people to do something they would not ordinarily want to do,” West said.

‘Bad actors’

According to the former prosecutor, Meta and other social media companies are not doing enough to remove AI-generated scam content from their platforms.

“Meta is enabling these bad actors to reach their prey, which is unsuspecting normal people,” West said.

In a statement to CTV News, a Meta spokesperson said, “It’s against our policies to run ads that deceptively use public figures to try to scam people. We remove scam ads when detected and encourage users to report suspected content so we can investigate and take appropriate action.”

The spokesperson added that they are taking measures to address these scams.

“Scams are a pervasive industry-wide challenge, driven by persistent criminals who constantly adapt to evade enforcement across every channel. We don’t want this content on our platforms, and we aggressively fight it using specialized systems to detect celeb-bait, invest heavily in trained review teams, share tips on avoiding scams and offer tools to report potential violations.”

With so much money to be made, West said the situation is bound worsen, and as officials crack down on scam call centres in Southeast Asia, criminals are looking to expand elsewhere.

“Organized crime groups are also moving (scamming compounds) to Latin America and Africa. They are quietly making inroads in other places in the world to run their dirty businesses. We have to stop the flow and stop these predators from accessing normal people,” said West.

Read part one of W5’s series on crypto scams.