World Day Against Trafficking in Persons Day 2026

July 30th is World Day Against Trafficking in Persons. This year’s theme is about a rapidly expanding form of human trafficking in which organized crime groups exploit people to carry out industrial-scale financial fraud. Victims are trafficked for forced criminality and compelled to participate in online scam operations.

Through fake job ads that promise employment abroad, victims are forced to conduct romance scams, cryptocurrency fraud, and other online schemes targeting people around the world. They are kept under surveillance and subjected to violence, threats, debt bondage, and demanding work quotas, leaving them trapped in conditions of fear with little opportunity to escape.

Scam centers have been found at the Thailand/Myanmar border with victims asking for rescue from slave-like conditions working in scam centers around the clock.

Watch a clip from @thehiddenthirdpodcast’s report on scam.