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Scam Factories Ep 3: Great Escapes
Wednesday, 11 June, 2025

Every day that he was locked up in a scam compound in Southeast Asia, George thought about how to get out. "We looked for means of escaping, but it was hard," he said. Scam Factories is a podcast series taking you inside Southeast Asia's brutal fraud compounds. It accompanies a series of multimedia articles on The Conversation.In our third and final episode, Great Escapes, we find out the different ways survivors manage to escape, what it takes for them to get home, and what is being done to clamp down on the industry. This podcast series first aired in February 2025 on The Conversation Weekly. In June 2025 it won Best Investigative Podcast at the Publisher Podcast Awards. The series was written and produced by Gemma Ware with production assistance from Katie Flood and Mend Mariwany. Sound design by Michelle Macklem. Leila Goldstein was our producer in Cambodia and Halima Athumani recorded for us in Uganda. Hui Lin helped us with Chinese translation. Editing help from Justin Bergman and Ashlynee McGhee. Getting out of Southeast Asia's scam factoriesFrom empty fields to locked cities: the rise of a billion-dollar criminal industry‘We could hear the screams until midnight’: life inside Southeast Asia’s brutal fraud compounds