Back in October 2024, a 22-year-old named Giu from Bi village, Gia Lai province, suddenly disappeared, and no one knew what had happened. It turns out he had been tricked into crossing into Cambodia, and the entire village was stunned.

His brother Hyiu later said that a few months earlier, Giu had mentioned a "friend" calling him to Hanoi for work, but he wouldn't say who it was or what kind of job it was. Not long after, he called, asking for money to buy a bus ticket home, and later claimed he was in Ho Chi Minh City, where he had started a job that paid VND550,000 a day. That was the last regular update before things began to go downhill.

According to Giu, when he arrived in HCMC, a man picked him up, supposedly to take him to a durian farm. But after a couple of hours, the car just broke down on the side of the road. He already felt uneasy. That night, they switched him into another car, forced him to swallow a pill, and he blacked out. When he woke up, he was in a busy area without his phone and realized he had been taken.

He ended up in a Cambodian "special zone" where people were locked in rooms with computers and phones. Their job was to scam people online. Since he lacked the skills and couldn't keep up, they punished him severely. He was beaten, shocked with electricity until his body went numb, and even forced to run laps as punishment. Every time he failed, they made him call home, begging for ransom money, starting at VND 120 million, and later increasing to VND 150 million when he was sold to another company. His family was too poor to pay, so he was shuffled from one scam group to another for months.

He tried to escape several times, but the compound had walls taller than rooftops, cameras everywhere, and guards watching around the clock. Once, he secretly sent his location to his brother, but they found out, locked him up, beat him, and took away his meal card, causing him to starve for days.

Finally, in May, he managed to steal a phone from the scammer's workroom, hide it in a restroom, and message a local police officer back in his community. About a month later, rescue forces arrived. But even then, the scammers tried to hide him in a warehouse and tortured him again, lying to authorities that he wasn't there. It was only when the police insisted on searching that they were finally able to rescue him.

On June 17, 2025, after nearly five months of petitions from his family, he was finally brought home by commune police and border guards. His family and neighbors felt a profound sense of relief.

Now he's safe, but the trauma from the beatings and electric shocks persists.

What do you all think? This story seems like just one of many cases where poor or unskilled workers are deceived with fake job offers and led into scam compounds. How can people be better protected from falling into these traps?

Man, that’s terrifying. You hear about these scam compounds, but reading what this poor guy went through really puts it into perspective. The fact that they drugged him and kept selling him from one place to another is sick. I’m glad the local police actually followed through and didn’t give up after the scammers lied. Honestly, I think the biggest problem is the lack of awareness in rural areas. People don’t realize how common these fake job offers are until it’s too late.

Yeah, awareness is essential, but there’s an even bigger problem. These scam operations in Cambodia and Myanmar are running almost openly. Everyone knows about them, yet they continue to operate because money talks. Without stronger international pressure and coordination, stories like Giu’s will continue to happen. It’s basically modern slavery. At least his family didn’t give up on filing petitions, or he might still be trapped there.

That's why I never trust those “easy money” job calls. If someone can’t even give you the company name or details, that’s a red flag.