We’ve all heard the stories – people scammed out of life savings meant for their children or retirement. But while global losses to online scams are estimated at over $1 trillion USD, the person scamming you isn’t who you might think. Criminal syndicates are pulling off one of the greatest global heists of our time, and they’re using modern slaves to do it.
In 2023, Unheard co-founder Rich Thompson met Micah and Ava, a young couple who had been trafficked into a Cambodian scam compound, where they were forced to conduct elaborate romance-investment cons, which involved tricking Western victims into falling in love, then draining their bank accounts. Micah and Ava, who worked under threat of torture and death, were as much victims as their Western targets, but the world labeled them only as “scammers.” We knew we had to tell their story.
Unheard’s mission is to use compelling, long-form storytelling, rooted in authentic experiences and narratives, to amplify small voices and drive change for good. The Fight of My Life: Escaping Scam City (ESC) aims to raise awareness of the epidemic of forced scamming, and thereby better protect both the victims who are forced to scam, as well as those who lose their money to scams. As former cyber-crime prosecutor and anti-scam advocate Erin West said on the podcast, the more we talk about scamming, the closer we are to ending it.
After initially connecting with Micah and Ava - who reside in Thailand - through an NGO, our team spent over one year building ESC for a global audience. In May 2024, we traveled to Bangkok and extensively interviewed Micah and Ava, before traveling to Cambodia to retrace their steps. We directly encountered human trafficking victims on our flight from Bangkok to Phnom Penh, visited scamming compounds fronted by casinos in Sihanoukville, and met with numerous journalists and human rights defenders in Cambodia who are supporting the victims caught in the humanitarian crisis of forced scamming. Our fact-finding trip, as well as hours of further Zoom conversations with Micah, Ava and subject matter experts worldwide, informed the creation of ESC.
Our goal at Unheard is to tell difficult stories in a way that makes people want to listen. We chose to center our narrative around Micah and Ava’s love story, and how that love ultimately gave them the courage to escape the compound where they had been held. While ESC includes numerous interviews with subject matter experts and provides geopolitical and historical context, the heart of the story is a human one: how ordinary people respond to extraordinary circumstances, often at great cost to themselves. Other key features of ESC include a strong narrative throughline, a diversity of featured voices, and our team’s personal connection to the story, which was underscored when Mech Dara, a journalist and featured voice on the podcast, was arrested and charged with “incitement” in September 2024 for his role in exposing forced scamming.
Our primary challenge was telling Ava and Micah’s story in a way that was authentic to their experience, without sensationalizing events or painting them as stereotypical victims. We did so by spending hours interviewing both of them, repeatedly requesting their feedback on the script, and iterating accordingly. Another challenge was navigating interviews with individuals who feared retaliation (from both the Cambodian and United States governments) for speaking out. All guests on the podcast were given right of refusal over their soundbites, and the Unheard team worked tirelessly to ensure that all those featured supported the final product.
Through releasing ESC, we have achieved our mission of raising global awareness of forced scamming. We launched ESC in May, with an event in Singapore that attracted over 75 guests, including international media and influencers. Since then, with minimal ad spend, ESC has seen over 140,000 downloads, been featured on Apple Podcasts and was in the Top 10 (in the True Crime category) on Apple Podcasts in the United States in September 2025. More importantly, we have tapped into a community of engaged listeners whose advocacy and organic financial contributions have meant real-life change for scam victims. Listeners were so moved by ESC that they donated funds to help repatriate hundreds of scamming survivors who, after being rescued, remained in limbo on the Thai / Myanmar border. And more recently, when our protagonist Ava was found guilty of “scamming” by a Thai court (rather than being correctly classified as a victim), our community of listeners donated the funds to pay for her bail and hire a defense attorney to appeal her conviction, which remains in process. While we consider both of these tangible outcomes a “success”, we continue to proactively seek further avenues for wider distribution in order to educate a global audience on the complexities of forced scamming.
