During the May Day holiday in China, while cities are bustling and tourist spots are crowded, a group of young people trapped in overseas scam parks are spending their days in dark rooms, missing out on the holiday festivities.
They are known as "dog pushers" — the bottom-tier promoters in scam groups, dealing daily with hundreds of scripts, constantly refreshing K-line charts, overheating laptops, and delayed salaries. Their world has no holidays, only high pressure and exploitation.
Decline of scam groups, global crackdown intensifies
In recent years, the telecom fraud industry has faced unprecedented crackdowns. From China to Southeast Asia, from the Thai border to the Clark Park in the Philippines, scam "paradises" have fallen one after another. Law enforcement agencies from various countries frequently collaborate to eliminate these hubs, leaving no place for scammers to hide. Traditional "strongholds" like Cambodia, Vietnam, and Myanmar have become key targets, and even Sri Lanka and Malaysia have joined the cleanup efforts.
Technologically, scam groups rely on AI face-swapping, voice cloning, and automated social scripts, while anti-scam forces are also evolving. AI recognition systems, cross-border financial tracking platforms, and intelligence sharing mechanisms are continuously improving. According to the latest data from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), nearly 40 billion US dollars flow into the scam industry in Southeast Asia alone each year. However, as regulations tighten, scam groups are "migrating" to new targets such as Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East, with Angola, Zambia, Brazil, and even Bahrain appearing on their "test list".
"Upgraded" parks resurface, the gray market is transforming
Facing crackdowns, scam groups have not ceased operations but have quietly restarted their businesses in more concealed locations. In Sri Lanka, a seemingly legitimate plan to establish a gambling regulatory authority is suspected of paving the way for a mix of gambling and telecom fraud; while on the border of Oddar Meanchey Province in Cambodia, someone has secretly built 16 buildings capable of housing thousands, aiming to create a "new type of complex park".
These new parks operate more like precision-run corporate factories: employee dormitories, promotion training, script processes, performance assessments are all available, and they even offer complete PPT packages labeled as "cross-border e-commerce projects". Although these parks are quietly recovering, they no longer publicly recruit but do so through personal referrals and silent hiring to avoid regulatory radars.
The real plight of the bottom-tier dog pushers: the hardest part is not the scam, but the exploitation
In these parks, the most arduous and insecure jobs are often not those of the scam planners but the "dog pushers," the online promoters. They are responsible for content production, community operations, script distribution, and customer acquisition, yet often do not receive the compensation they deserve.
"Your project is blocked," "Performance below standard," "Results unsatisfactory"—these seemingly legitimate excuses are often used to withhold salaries or even outright dismiss employees. After being laid off, some people don't even have time to grab their phones before being forcibly expelled from their dormitories, with all related chat records deleted.
Some dog pushers lament, "I thought I was a scammer, but it turns out, I'm just an exploited worker." More ironically, some bottom-tier employees don't even know who controls the "scheme" (scam project) or have never seen the person in charge.
An inescapable holiday: another form of imprisonment in the dark room
Holidays mean nothing to them. Dog pushers are still holed up in cheap apartments and tin shacks, with no internet, no electricity, no rest, starting from 12 hours of work a day. They don't want to escape; they just can't. Passports are confiscated, communications are restricted, surveillance is everywhere—any sign of escape could lead to violent expulsion.
Some choose to hide the truth, only sharing good news with their families or even disappearing into the crowd, all to spare their families the worry and shame.
These dog pushers are not high-IQ criminals but are trapped in the black and gray industry chain as "system screws". They are not the real controllers but bear the brunt of the exploitation and torment. In a global context of strong crackdowns and continuously upgraded technological countermeasures, this so-called "shortcut to wealth" has long become a high-risk, low-return dead end.
Conclusion:
Not every keyboard hides a scamming brain; some are just ordinary people who have fallen into the mire in their struggle to survive. They are the laborers in the gray production chain, the scapegoats bearing the blame. The keystrokes not only produce fraudulent messages but also spell out tragedies that are hard to escape.
This May Day holiday, while people enjoy freedom and sunshine, they remain trapped in the keyboard's cage, continuing to overwork and remain silent. It's not that they don't want to escape; they are systematically trapped.
