2026 Trafficking in Persons Report: Summary
U.S. Department of State | The State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons has released the 2026 Trafficking in Persons report, which includes a special-interest section titled “Scam Operations: Trafficking, Technology, and the Evolving Threat to U.S. and Global Security.”
Trafficking and the Scam Industry
As the report notes, transnational criminal organizations have recruited hundreds of thousands of people from at least 80 countries to work in scam centers. Many of these people travel to or are taken to Southeast Asia and other regions, where they are trafficked as forced labor and forced to commit scams, such as cryptocurrency investment, romance fraud, and phishing.
If You’ve Been Targeted in a Cyberfraud Scam
The State Department highlights Operation Shamrock in its guidance for scam victims.
Report
Report it to law enforcement as soon as possible, starting with your local police agency.
Report to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3).
File a report with your state attorney general’s office. Many states also have state-specific reporting recommendations available from state-level departments of state, departments of commerce, securities divisions, or financial protection offices.
Get Support
Victims of these fraud crimes often experience stigma and harm to their mental or emotional well-being, alongside financial loss. Consider reaching out to a network, such as Operation Shamrock, or other support groups or resources and seek help when needed.
Learn More
FBI: fbi.gov/scams
Federal Trade Commission https://consumer.ftc.gov/scams
Americans are a primary target of these operations, which stole $18.2 billion from Americans in 2025 alone. Organized criminals often recruit their “workforce” by advertising jobs on social media, job boards, and messaging apps. When victims arrive for their new jobs, they’re ultimately forced to commit financial crimes. Trafficking victims are often held in massive guarded compounds, where they’re required to do the work under threat of violence, sexual exploitation, and other abuses.
Traffickers typically take passports and identity documents from their victims and often move them to regions where they have no right to work. If released from the compounds, they often end up homeless, without resources to return home or documentation to prove who they are and that they've been victimized. Additionally, they are often subject to criminal or administrative penalties solely for acts committed while under the control of the traffickers.
A key position made in the report: “Crucially, governments need to address the corruption and complicity fueling online scam operations, as well as high rates of impunity for criminal actors; otherwise, these operations will continue to flourish and potentially expand.”
Helping Trafficking Victims to Improve Prosecution
Holding traffickers accountable requires cooperation and testimony from victims, particularly when dealing with complex transnational criminal networks. Successful prosecution depends on victim testimony. Survivors are more inclined and able to help when they receive protection and medical, psychological, and economic support.
Trafficking victims often receive little support and risk secondary victimization, including prosecution for acts committed under coercion, making them less likely to report having been trafficked. Evidence shows that strong victim support services improve survivor health, criminal justice outcomes, and prosecution rates.
Grading Trafficking Elimination Efforts
The report uses research collected from every region in the world to assess the human trafficking situation and government efforts to fight trafficking. The collected research also includes meetings with government officials, NGO representatives, academics, trafficking survivors, and others.
The full report also includes an index of country-level reports that identify the tier level and provide information on prosecution, protection, and prevention efforts, as well as a “trafficking profile” outlining the types of trafficking active in the country.
TVPA Tier Definitions
The TVPA report places countries into one of four tiers based on the level of government efforts to eliminate human trafficking. The efforts typically align with the UN TIP Protocol. It’s important to note that the tier designations are based on government efforts to meet TVPA standards and do not represent the size and scope of trafficking within the country itself.
Tier 1: Fully meets the TVPA’s minimum standards for eliminating trafficking. There may be trafficking in the country, but it has made efforts to address the problem and shown progress each year.
Tier 2: Dord not fully meet minimum standards but are making significant efforts to comply.
Tier 2 Watch List: Has high and/or increasing rates of trafficking without proportional government response; or fails to provide evidence of increased efforts.
Tier 3: Does not fully meet TVPA’s minimum standards and is not making significant efforts to do so.
Tier 3 countries commonly associated with transnational organized crime and scam operations include Cambodia, China, and Laos.
What the Tier Designations Don’t Recognize
The tiering evaluation does not include independent efforts by nongovernment organizations within the country. It also doesn't credit public awareness campaigns that don’t tie directly to prevention, victim protection, or prosecution.
Why the Tier Designations Matter
The tier designations have consequences. In the U.S., the President can take action affecting Tier 3 countries, including:
Imposing or waiving restrictions on nonhumanitarian, nontrade-related foreign assistance to Tier 3 countries.
Restricting funding for government official or employee participation in educational and cultural exchange programs with Tier 3 countries.
Instructing the U.S. Executive Director of each multilateral development bank and the International Monetary Fund to vote against and work to deny loans or funds to a designated Tier 3 country for most purposes.
Additional Information in the 2026 Trafficking in Persons Report
Global and regional maps and tables showing prosecution rates, convictions, identified victims, and new or amended legislation between 2019 and 2025
A summary of actions taken by the UN, NATO, and OSCE to prevent trafficking and exploitation in 2025
A list of international conventions that countries ratified, acceded to, or accepted any such conventions between April 2025 and March 2026
Annual Report to Congress on the Use of Child Soldiers under Section 405(c) of the Child Soldiers Prevention Act of 2008
Individual country reports that provide information about prosecution, protection, and prevention efforts, as well as a “trafficking profile” that outlines the types of trafficking active in the country
