Scamlands book review: Are any of us really safe?

I met Snigdha Poonam at the White Owl Literature Festival in Dimapur, Nagaland. We were part of a panel on fake news and scams, and I must admit, because of the subject, we got some good press the next day.

Scams interest everyone. Maybe it is because, in today’s digital world, no matter how careful we are, we all get pulled into one scam or another. And by scam, I do not mean only the ones where there is a financial loss.

There are scams that pull us towards a certain narrative, a political position or a change we do not immediately recognise. Slowly, like cattle, we are herded into a pen to be butchered now or later.

Snigdha’s Scamlands: Inside the Asian Empire of Fraud That Preys on the World feels like a book written by someone going at a mountain with a chisel and hammer, one rock at a time. You can feel the labour behind it.

She moves from one scam to another, meeting scammers and their prey, listening to people who have done terrible things and to those whose lives have been destroyed by them.

There isn’t one scam in the book that you can put your finger on and say, “Wow.” The entire book is a series of wows. How did they think of this? Why didn’t I think of that? How can people be so gullible all over the world?

After every chapter, the first person I discussed the story with was my mother. Not because I wanted to save her from some future scam.

She is actually quite difficult to scam. I simply wanted her to know. But after reading this book, I think all of us are potential targets, including those who believe they are too careful or too intelligent to fall for such things.

So why should you read Scamlands?

Read it to understand how the Jamtara masterminds worked during their peak days, earning thousands and lakhs by preying on ordinary people. In some places, farmland practically turned into scam call centres.

“I am calling from your bank.”

“I am calling from your credit-card company.”

We have all received these calls. We have all heard the warnings: do not share your OTP with strangers, even if the person claims to be a bank employee. Yet people continue to fall for this most basic scam.

Then there are others where even the most careful people have lost everything. Ask them how it happened, and sometimes even they do not know.

These scams may have come down because of police crackdowns and because people are more aware now. But I am sure that, even as I write this, some mastermind is sitting somewhere and working on a new idea.

“Life Insurance for the Dead” is another dark part of the book. It is so absurd that you do not know whether to laugh or cry.

In Assam, networks were created to take out insurance policies in the names of people who were already dead and then declare them dead once again. Entire villages became involved.

Think about the planning required, the paperwork, the cooperation and the number of people who had to remain silent. A scam is rarely the work of one clever person sitting alone in a room.

Then the book takes us to the industrial-sized scam operations in Cambodia and Myanmar. Young people are offered good salaries and international jobs. They leave home thinking that their lives are about to improve.

Instead, many are trafficked, locked inside compounds and forced to scam strangers online. Those who refuse to comply are beaten.

These chapters are horror stories.

The account of a Delhi girl who was trafficked to Myanmar when she was twenty-one hit me particularly hard. She was betrayed by a friend she trusted and ended up inside a scam centre. She only just managed to get out.

Many others were not so lucky. The book even speaks of bodies near the seashore. By that point, you are no longer reading only about people losing money. You are reading about people being bought, sold, imprisoned and sometimes killed.

It also changes the way we look at scammers. Some of those sending fraudulent messages are criminals working willingly. Others are themselves victims who have been trapped and are being forced to trap someone else. How do we describe a person who is both victim and perpetrator?

The romance scams are no less disturbing. People repeatedly fall for online lovers, including those operating from places like Gurgaon, and for the famous Chinese “pig-butchering” scam. Is the opposite gender our weakness?

Or is it loneliness? Perhaps what makes people vulnerable is the simple desire to have someone listen to them and make them feel important.

These scams do not usually begin with money. They begin with “hello.” They begin with friendship, concern, attention and daily conversation.

The scammer may take weeks or months to build trust. By the time money enters the conversation, the victim is already emotionally invested.

It is easy to call such people foolish. It is also convenient because it allows us to believe that the same thing could never happen to us. But everyone has a weak point. It could be love, fear, greed, ambition, loneliness or the hope that, for once, something good has come our way.

The book was published in 2025. About a year later, I am certain there are newer scams hitting the market every day. There may already be someone quietly emptying thousands of bank accounts a few paise at a time, knowing that the missing amounts are too small to be noticed.

Everyone tells us to be vigilant. Do not click strange links. Do not share your OTP. Do not trust unknown callers. But is being vigilant enough? Can we ever really be safe when scams are designed around the very things that make us human?

I will ask Snigdha the next time we meet at a literature festival.

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