A Kenyan woman, Moreen Mukami, who had traveled to Thailand in search of greener pastures, has opened up about the horrifying experiences she witnessed in the country — including how she narrowly escaped having her kidney harvested.
In an interview with Tuko on Thursday, March 6, 2025, Moreen revealed how her desperation to find better opportunities abroad led her into the hands of ruthless agents who deceived her into believing she was heading to the Asian country for a marketing executive job.
The mother of one revealed that the scheme was carefully concealed and executed in secrecy. She only met the individuals she was set to travel with at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport just hours before their flight. This last-minute arrangement left them with no opportunity to thoroughly review the details of the deal they had been offered.
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‘My name is Moreen Kamau, and I am a mother of one. I’m the firstborn, a Christian. Back in June 2022, I was one of the victims who was rescued from the ordeal in the Thailand scheme. I travelled to a place called the Golden Triangle, which was the exact location. I did not go there with the job description that I found waiting for me. I went there as a sales agent. Previously, I had done marketing, so with the same experience, I was hoping to work in the same field.’
In an emotional account that left her in tears, Moreen recounted how she borrowed a significant amount of money to secure the job deal through an agent. She had been connected to the scammer by a friend, who had also been promised an opportunity to travel to Dubai.
Trusting the deal, she invested her hard-earned savings, only to be met with a nightmare. Upon arrival in the distant country, they were taken to a dilapidated company where strict rules were enforced — including a ban on using their own smartphones — leaving their hearts pounding with fear.
According to her account, the agents had lured them into a well-orchestrated plan where they were repeatedly threatened, as the Chinese company in Dubai that had taken them in paid a whopping Ksh3 million for each of them. The ultimatum was clear—if they wanted to seek any form of help or return home, they had to work and repay the money in full.
‘But upon arrival at Thailand airport, that was when we realised the information given to us by the agency was false. At the airport, we received direct instructions from Kenya. We were given connections through WhatsApp and were directed to Laos. It wasn’t a bad experience at first. I had been referred to an agent by a friend who had gone to Dubai. That’s how I found out about the Thailand opportunity, and at the time, it seemed like a booming venture. I was determined to work. I never had a close friend accompanying me, and I only got to meet the eight other Kenyans involved in the deal at the airport. We had a Chinese receiver there, and we managed to get a visa. From there, we were taken to our initial residence, a building with over thirty stories. First, we were shown a typing job where our speed needed to be tested first.’
With little choice, Moreen persevered alongside the other eight Kenyans, but conditions kept worsening, particularly when they were resold to a different company that specialised in online Bitcoin fraud.
According to her, they were transported to the new workplace with all their belongings without their consent and were forced to create fake social media accounts to deceive wealthy Asians on dating apps while posing as genuine Bitcoin dealers.
She lamented that the job was inhumane and came with harsh restrictions, such as salary deductions if they overstayed in the toilet or failed to meet the daily targets set for them.
‘The rules were strict—no talking and no wasting time. You were also not allowed to go to the washroom more than six times while working. Later, we were told to open Instagram accounts. Our phones were confiscated immediately upon arrival, and we were only allowed access to them during weekends. After opening accounts on the phones they gave us, we were sold to another company without our knowledge. We were taken by a van with all our belongings to the main company, which was housed in a very tall building. We were the only Black people there, and some had never seen Black people before. They even asked if that was our real skin colour. When we got there, things took a turn for the worse. We were given more phones and SIM cards. If you arrived late, you got a deduction. If you spent extra time in the washroom, you paid a fine. If you failed to meet the daily requirements, you paid. Per person, the company had invested an expenditure of Ksh3 million, which we were expected to refund to the agency. Our work was to get on dating apps, identify individuals who appeared wealthy, and bombard them with messages urging them to invest in the company that the Chinese had hired us to work for. It wasn’t easy.’
Organ Trafficking and Harvesting
As her story unfolded, Moreen revealed that the company was owned by Chinese nationals and operated from a gloomy skyscraper, heightening the unsettling atmosphere of the ordeal.
She noted that some Chinese workers bravely resisted the harsh restrictions imposed by their bosses. However, for Kenyans and other foreigners, defying orders came at a brutal cost. Those who disobeyed faced severe beatings that left them unable to walk — and in some horrifying cases, they were taken away, never to return, with their organs, particularly kidneys, harvested.
Maureen revealed that she was lucky to have escaped such a fate, as she had decided to comply before being transferred to another job in Canada, which also turned out to be a scam.
However, she had witnessed Chinese workers who were taken into hidden rooms and, upon their return, shared horror stories of how their organs had been harvested, showing deep incisions on their bodies where the scalpel had cut through as their kidneys were removed.
‘We also had some fellow Chinese workers with us, and all we could imagine was if they were subjecting their own people to such horrific consequences, then what could happen to us? You could be forced to stand the whole day. You could be beaten mercilessly, to the point where you were unable to walk. So we thought, if they could do this to their own people, then what about us? The worst part was that we didn’t have our passports. We had no phones. They were only given back to us on condition that we lied to our families and told them everything was fine. We would cry ourselves to sleep. Things got worse. We were being drained. We were part of an online scam. And we had finally realised that what we were doing was not selling Bitcoin as they had claimed but rather defrauding people using fake accounts. What they were doing to the Chinese in our presence was terrifying. The Chinese workers were taken to hidden rooms, and when they returned, they had incisions and stitches on their stomachs. When we asked them what had happened, they said one of their kidneys had been taken.’
