🚔 The Age of Scam Compounds

For secondary school, my parents shipped me away to boarding school. So regularly, I would return and notice the difference in the house, new neighbours, new joints. Once I returned, and I noticed something unmissable. 

Outside a tiny flat at the end of the road, fleets of cars were parked outside. There were mostly saloon cars, Toyotas and Hondas. But then there was the Range Rover, green and still uncommon in Lagos streets. It was driven by a guy who had become something of the leader of the pack. Every night they smoked the air out, drank drunk, used the trunk of their cars as a closet. Sometimes they slept in the cars because the house was too tiny to fit all of them in. 

We never really knew for sure, but it was widely agreed that they were into romance scams. Eventually the police raided the compound, and all the young men fled, many just shy of 18 years. 

This week, we reported on the reemergence of scam compounds in Thailand and the viciousness with which the ringleaders demand that they make money. I kept on thinking about those young men, working hard only for the guy in the Range Rover to take most of what they earned. I also have been thinking about him and what he is up to now. If he made something of himself or continued in that life. 

If, like me, you ever wondered what their ranks were like and how they lived and treated each other in those windowless dens they spend time in, then you should read our explainer on scam compounds in Thailand.

— Dennis, Managing Editor