Mariana van Zeller Goes Inside the Scam Compounds Nobody Sees
One of the few western journalists to cross the border into Myanmar, award-winning journalist Mariana van Zeller shares her insight with Erin West.
Episode 59: Mariana van Zeller — Emmy and Peabody Award-winning journalist, creator of National Geographic's Trafficked, and founder of the independent media venture The Hidden Third. Mariana is one of the few Western journalists to have crossed the Moei River into Myanmar and walked through Shwe Kokko — a gleaming, casino-filled city built on scam money, controlled by the Chinese criminal group Yatai International, and surrounded by an active civil war.
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Mariana is among the very few journalists to have crossed the border from Thailand into Myanmar to enter Shwe Kokko and report from inside. She describes what she saw on the ground, how she balanced access with accountability while interviewing the leader of a criminal enterprise, and why she believes empathy — not confrontation — is the most powerful investigative tool she has.
Shwe Kokko is not a rumor — it is a functioning criminal city.
Just five minutes across the Moei River from Thailand, what Mariana found in Shwe Kokko was not a rough jungle outpost. It appeared out of nowhere as a high-rise city with luxury casinos, water parks, go-kart tracks, and LED displays that rival those of the Las Vegas Sphere — all financed by proceeds from pig-butchering scams targeting Western victims. The elaborate “dog and pony show” staged for her visit — including posters denouncing labor trafficking displayed within sight of barbed-wire scam compounds — illustrated exactly how these criminal groups manage their international image while continuing to operate at full scale.
We were singing Whitney Houston at the top of our lungs with this criminal gang on day one in Myanmar. — Mariana van Zeller, The Hidden Third
The workers in Shwe Kokko are victims, not perpetrators.
While in Shwe Kokko, Mariana met survivors of forced labor inside the compounds, including a young Chinese man who had jumped from a fourth-floor window rather than endure further torture. Lured from China by the promise of legitimate employment, his passport was confiscated the moment he crossed the border.
In many cases, the people we consider scammers were even more victimized than the victims.— Mariana van Zeller
His story is not an outlier — it’s an example of the standard recruitment model. Mariana argues that framing scammers as criminals overlooks the fact that those operating the keyboards have often suffered more than the financial victims on the other end.
Dirty money from scam compounds flows closer to home than most people realize.
When Erin asked where the hundreds of billions of dollars collected in scams end up, Mariana’s answer was unambiguous: right here. Chinese criminal networks operating inside the United States launder money for both the cartels and overseas scam enterprises, meaning the wealth extracted from Western fraud victims cycles back into American cities. The estimated 35% of the global economy that functions as black and gray markets — what economists call “the hidden third” — is not a distant abstraction. It is shaping prices, politics, and communities in ways that almost no mainstream outlet is tracking.
It’s Chinese groups, but living in America, who launder a lot of this money. — Mariana van Zeller
Independent journalism has become the front line of accountability for transnational crime.
After five award-winning seasons, National Geographic declined to renew Trafficked — in part, Mariana believes, because expensive, politically sensitive field journalism no longer fits the priorities of large media platforms. Meanwhile, the stories she covers have continued to grow. Pig-butchering scams, forced labor compounds, and the criminal networks laundering billions through American cities remain dramatically underreported. Mariana has responded by launching The Hidden Third, a direct-to-audience media company built to fund the on-the-ground investigations that legacy outlets are stepping away from.
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The vast majority of people I’ve met are mothers and fathers and kids with dreams and aspirations and goals much like us. But they’ve not been given the chance to work in the legal economy. — Mariana van Zeller
Who Is Mariana van Zeller?
Mariana van Zeller is a Peabody and Emmy Award-winning journalist and filmmaker — the host and executive producer of National Geographic’s Trafficked with Mariana van Zeller and “The Hidden Third” podcast.
Over five seasons, Trafficked has offered an unprecedented look at global black markets and trafficking networks. In 2025, the series set an all-time record as the most Emmy-nominated unscripted series in history, with 29 Emmy nominations and winning four. Known for her bold and empathetic reporting, Mariana has become a leading authority on what economists call “the hidden third” — the multi-trillion dollar black and gray markets that comprise up to a third of the global economy.
Born and raised in Portugal, she moved to the U.S. to study journalism at Columbia University. One month into the program, she was reporting on 9/11 — an event that set the course for the type of reporting she wanted to do.
The military coup in Niger was one of those situations where we had prepared for everything except that. And they closed the borders and the airspace and we were left abandoned without a military escort. — Mariana van Zeller
Episode 59 Chapters
00:00 Meet Marianna van Zeller
04:04 Investigating Scam Compounds
09:23 Exploring Yatai New City
14:17 Navigating Interviews with Criminal Leaders
18:57 Victims of Human Trafficking and Scams
21:16 The Evolution of Scam Stories
25:14 Challenges in Mainstream Journalism
28:13 The Role of Independent Journalism
31:37 The Hidden Third: Understanding Black Markets
33:18 The Power Discrepancy of Big Tech
38:01 Understanding the Humans Behind the Crime
43:47 Navigating Dangerous Territories
44:50 The Unique Perspective of a Female Journalist
45:56 Preparing for High-Risk Interviews
53:32 The Global Impact of Organized Crime
Useful Links
Watch National Geographic’s Trafficked with Mariana van Zeller.
Check out Mariana’s The Hidden Third podcast on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, andSpotify.
Learn more on Mariana’s own website.
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Sponsors of Stolen
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