Human trafficking and exploitation risk, for companies and investors.
We advise on human trafficking, forced labor, and forced criminality — exposures that are as much questions of risk and resilience as of ethics. We draw on a network of civil society organizations and practitioners that has worked on these issues for more than a decade, with a current focus on the trafficking behind online scams.
The visibility gap
The risks you can’t see from the inside
Exploitation sits where companies see least: in recruitment chains, sub-tier suppliers, and online platforms, several steps beyond direct oversight.
Audits and screening check documents and known patterns. They rarely show how someone was recruited, what they paid, or where coercion entered. Seeing it in time depends on sources closer to where it happens.
Our current focus
The trafficking behind online scams
Trafficking for forced criminality now operates at industrial scale. People are recruited online, held in fortified compounds across Southeast Asia and beyond, and forced to run romance and investment fraud against victims worldwide. Unlike most exploitation, it reaches directly into payments, platforms, and customers.
Payments & financial crime
Proceeds move through mule accounts, crypto, and ordinary payment rails. We brief financial-crime teams on the typologies and the coercion behind them.
Platforms & trust & safety
Recruitment and fraud run across social, messaging, and job platforms, where coerced victims are easily mistaken for offenders.
Customers & exposure
The same networks defraud customers and increasingly draw in legitimate businesses. We advise risk teams on where they are exposed.
Expertise
What we cover
Trafficking into forced criminality
Coercion into crime, including scam compounds operating at industrial scale.
Coercion into crime, including scam compounds operating at industrial scale.
Cyber scam centers
How these operations recruit, coerce, and move money across borders.
Recruitment & labor exploitation
Recruitment fees, debt, and deception through brokers and sub-agents.
Forced labor in supply chains
Survivor protection
Acting on risk and allegations without endangering the people involved.
The civil society landscape
Who is credible on a given issue, and how to engage them.
Services
Ways We Can Work Together
Current Focus
Trafficking & online scams briefings
How the scam-trafficking economy works, and where it touches your industry.
Short written analysis on a specific question, country, or commodity.
Executive Briefings
A focused session for leadership, with a written summary.
Workshops
Sessions for internal teams, built around real cases.
Insight memos & landscape scans
Ongoing advisory
A standing relationship as risks and questions evolve.
Civil society engagement
Who to work with, and how, without the usual missteps.
Who we work with
The teams that carry exploitation risk
Why Freedom Collaborative
The network closest to the problem
Freedom Collaborative is a global network of civil society organizations, investigators, and practitioners that has worked on human trafficking and exploitation, in many forms and across many regions, for more than a decade. Advisory brings that network’s insight to companies and investors.
Close to the frontline
Our insight comes from organizations working directly with survivors and cases, in the places these issues happen.
Independent and nonprofit
We are a nonprofit network, so our analysis reflects what frontline organizations are documenting, not a commercial agenda.
One connected issue
We treat trafficking, forced labor, and forced criminality as one system, not separate problems — and as questions of risk and resilience, not ethics alone.
Get in touch
To arrange a briefing or discuss a specific risk, contact us. Engagements are confidential, and usually begin with a short conversation.