Prostitution, organ theft and cyber crime: Tales of Kenyans trafficked to Asia

It is emerging that the search for job opportunities in Asia is proving to be a nightmare for a section of Kenyans.

Some of the job seekers have now revealed that some of the supposed lucrative opportunities in the Far East often turn out to be a cover for cyber-crime, prostitution and even organ theft.

Citizen TV spoke exclusively to two Kenyan human trafficking survivors who returned from the Lao People’s Democratic Republic with a harrowing tale. 

Catherine and Joyce (not their real names) were struggling financially in Kenya when they heard of a lucrative customer service and sales opportunities in Thailand.

The opportunity in Thailand promised as much as Ksh.100, 000 per month. They say they borrowed nearly Ksh. 250,000 to pay their agents, underwent a short training session and one month later they were on their way to what they thought were greener pastures.

Upon arrival in Thailand, however, the story started changing; their handlers took them by road to a location whose name they did not know and at some point they crossed a river. 

 “We took a boat and crossed over, and we were told we were in Laos and we were taken by someone else,” narrates Catherine.

“They told us not to talk to anyone on the journey and just to pretend that we were tourists,” says Joyce.

Catherine says they were taken to a hostel where their passports were taken and they we were told their visas would be turned into working visas.

They say they spent the night under very tight security in the company of other Kenyans who had been there for some time before them.

“It is a big storey building. We slept there, ate there and the officers were there as well. There was a supermarket, clothes shops, tight security…..we met other Kenyans, who asked us what sort of work we come here for,” Joyce says.

“We told them it is customer service. They told us there is nothing like that here; the work here is cyber-crime, a time came when we were given computers, Chinese, Laos and Kenyans. We were told to look for pictures, dating sites and make fake accounts; Tinder, Instagram, Facebook.," she adds.

Their job was to look for clients online, pose as lovers and lure them.

“They fall in love with you and you can tell them about crypto-currency. You start stealing from them. They told us they were targeting us users online,” Joyce adds.

Catherine explains what they looked for in a photo: “you look for a beautiful woman, with money and travels. You take their pictures and pretend that you are them. You go to Facebook and start to friend request men from the US, you ask for their WhatsApp number and start talking well.”

The victims told us that money in cash was openly displayed in their offices to motivate the agents to keep looking for vulnerable online users to entice.

Identity theft and impersonation is a crime and different jurisdictions have different penalties for this. In Kenya, under Section 29 of the Computer Misuse and Cyber-crimes Act, the offence can result in a fine of Ksh.200,000, 2 years imprisonment or both. 

“We told them we don’t want to do this work, it is illegal. They told us we must pay Ksh.1.2million so that we buy our freedom. Then we told them we also paid and they said then you were conned. That is where we started looking for help,” says Joyce. 

“We bothered them for the contract. Finally, we got to and realized it is not true. When we got there we were told it is 100,000 first, then 50,000 then no pay after that, only commissions,” she adds. 

She recalls a time they started fearing for their lives, around when a Kenyan told them exactly what was happening.

“He told us if you were not productive you would be sold maybe into prostitution or organ donation to repay their money. So we started fearing for our lives. You can’t leave. They refused to pay us our salaries and people refused to go to work,” Joyce adds.

And with that information in mind, they started looking for a way out. 

“We started looking for help, one of us got the ambassadors number and the other HAART Kenya (Awareness Against Human Trafficking) and they started working on us and the government released our names. Haart Kenya helped us to get tickets and that is how IOM helped us to come back home and the tickets were bought and we came back home,” she narrates.

On the 23rd of September, 2022, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs informed Kenyans of the return of 24 Kenyans from traffickers in Laos.

The ministry warned that there could be, hundreds of mostly young Kenyans working in 'fraud factories' in South East Asia.

Official sources indicate that some of the factories may be facilities for extracting and storing human organs. The Foreign Ministry warned that once ‘work’ commences, those who fail to meet the performance targets are tortured, whipped or locked up in dark rooms alone for days on without food.

One rescued Kenyan said she was locked up for three days without food. There are no sales and customer care jobs in Thailand or other countries in the Asian region.

The majority of the Kenyans are lured to travel to Thailand or Malaysia on tourist visas, but in the real sense, they are being trafficked across the border to the ‘fraud factories’ once they have landed.

Mercy Otieno, the Head of Protection at HAART Kenya says since August, they have gotten a lot of distress calls from Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia of Kenyans “who went in search of better opportunities and realised that they have been trafficked.” 

The NGO informed Citizen TV that there are at least 9 other Kenyans in distress in Myanmar, 17 in Lebanon and at least 100 in Saudi Arabia. 

The good news is that there may be justice beckoning for those who were duped into these jobs. 

“For Laos Myanmar case there is an ongoing court case between the state and the agents,” says Otieno. 

On October 21, 2022, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs further warned Kenyans to be wary of human trafficking cartels, further stating that 50 Kenyans have been rescued so far.

“Look at salary versus work. When people keep telling you that this is a secret then you have an issue….if you don’t have a contract don’t leave the country,” advises Otieno.