ABUJA, Nigeria — A 26-year-old Borno State native, Sabiu, was trapped in Bokeo Province, Laos, after being sold for $5,000 (N7,750,000) into an online cyber-scam compound following a fraudulent job offer from a Chinese businessman named Wang Xu.
Okay News reports that Sabiu returned to Nigeria in September 2025 through the joint intervention of the International Organization for Migration, the Nigerian Embassy in Vietnam, Nigeria’s National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons, and Nigeria’s National Intelligence Agency.
According to a senior NAPTIP operative, the agency’s Intelligence and International Cooperation Unit intercepted close to 1,000 persons attempting to travel to the Middle East and Asia between November 2024 and early 2025.
The United States Department of the Treasury sanctioned Chinese businessman Zhao Wei in 2018 for running a transnational criminal organization operating in the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone, where up to 400 scam call centers functioned as of 2024.
A 2025 report by the United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission revealed that scam centers across Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos generated approximately $43.8bn (N67.89tn) in revenue in 2023, representing 40% of the combined gross domestic product of the three nations.
Nigeria’s National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons Director-General, Binta Bello, confirmed that the agency repatriated 23 Nigerian youths from Thailand in February 2026 who had been trafficked for cyber-enabled crimes.
NAPTIP recorded 93 convictions in 2025 alongside more than 2,500 interceptions of potential human trafficking victims.
Another victim, Offor, 28, from Abia State, was trafficked on September 5, 2025, after accepting a fraudulent online job offer promising $1,500 (N2,325,000) monthly, subsequently being forced into labor at the CK Hills Hotel compound in Myanmar guarded by the Democratic Karen Benevolent Army.
