Tempted by the prospect of a big salary, Kau contacted the agent, who arranged for him to fly to Thailand on March 9.
Little did he know he was about to be a victim of human trafficking.
“I met the Malaysian agent at KLIA on March 9 but I didn’t realise I was being tricked until we had to take a 15-minute boat ride along the Mekong River to a ‘special zone’,” Kau told a press conference organised by Kepong MP Lim Lip Eng today.
After the boat ride, he said, he was taken to the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone in the Bokeo province in Laos, where he was housed at a camp in a large compound.
The high-paying job turned out to be a scam operation where he had to contact people on social media and get them to invest US$10,000 a month in cryptocurrency.
He said he was not allowed to leave his camp, which was heavily guarded, unless it was to eat or work. On top of that, he was also only paid a total of 6,000 yuan (about RM3,900) over two months.
Kau said there were about 100 Malaysians in the camp, half of whom were there “willingly” while the other half had been duped like him. He estimated that some 300 Malaysians were being held in other camps within the compound.
“I had access to the internet and was tasked with scamming people in Taiwan. I didn’t contact my family and friends because I thought I would be released after six months,” he said.
However, he said, the syndicate was not pleased with his performance and threatened to “sell” him to another “company”.
He said he decided to discreetly ask a friend back home to lodge a report with the police.
In August, Kau was rescued by local authorities in Laos after Lim’s office got wind of the case and contacted the foreign ministry for assistance.
On his return on Aug 25, the ministry billed Kau RM11,118, half of which was paid by his family and the remainder by Lim’s office.
Kau advised the public against being fooled by job offers through unofficial channels and to ensure the offers were legitimate before accepting them.
Lim, who is also DAP’s public complaints bureau chief, said there had been an increase in human trafficking cases and suggested that governments in high-trafficking countries cooperate to establish a special task force.
“Countries like China, Taiwan and Malaysia should form a task force comprising local police and military to raid zones controlled by syndicates in Laos and Cambodia,” he said.