A Chinese actor was enslaved in a compound running online scams

The United Nations estimated in a report last August that more than 200,000 people are being forced to work as scammers in Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos.

Kidnap victim Xu Bochun, 38, in Shanghai on July 6. (Raul Ariano for The Washington Post)

By Christian Shepherd, Shibani Mahtani and Pei-Lin Wu
July 22, 2024 at 5:00 a.m. EDT

For Xu Bochun, left down and nearly out in Shanghai by pandemic layoffs, a month’s work as a movie extra in balmy southwest China sounded like easy money.

It turned out to be anything but.

Armed men kidnapped the aspiring actor, then 37, last year after he showed up for what proved to be a fake part and marched him at knifepoint through the jungle and across the border into northern Myanmar.

There, he was beaten and sold to a criminal group running cyber scams, targeting victims with fake investment schemes and online romance. He was forced to spend three months duping people out of their money until his family paid a ransom for his release in October.

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By Shibani Mahtani
Shibani Mahtani is a Singapore-based international investigative correspondent for The Washington Post. She focuses on accountability-driven investigations across the Asia-Pacific region. She joined The Post's foreign desk in 2018 as the Southeast Asia and Hong Kong Bureau Chief after seven years as a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal. Twitter