Hsieh Yueh-peng describes himself as "a man who has been to hell and back".
"Three of my fingers are still numb," Mr Hsieh told the ABC, rubbing his hands and flexing his fingers.
The Taiwanese performer's doctor told him it was a symptom of nerve damage, possibly due to the tight handcuffs that dug into his wrists.
"My job before was performing fire stunts, and grip strength is crucial," he said.
"But now, with my injuries, I don't know if I can go back.
"I had to cancel all the gigs that I had lined up."
The "hell" that Mr Hsieh escaped just last month was a cyber-scam compound in Myanmar.
Online fraud operations have flourished in recent years across civil-war wracked Myanmar and other parts of South-East Asia.
These compounds are typically run by Chinese criminal syndicates and frequently use slave labour — luring people in with the promise of high-paying jobs, only for them to be held captive and forced to scam victims via the internet.
Survivors describe prison-like conditions.
Beatings and torture are common tactics used to punish attempted escapees and failure to meet targets.
From job offers to captivity
The issue drew international attention last month following the dramatic rescue of Chinese actor Wang Xing.
Wang travelled to Bangkok in December on the promise of an acting job he had been offered online.
Instead, he was abducted and smuggled to Myanmar's Myawaddy, a notorious cyber fraud hub bordering Thailand.
Wang was only rescued after his girlfriend launched an online campaign calling for help, which went viral on Chinese social media.
Under public pressure, the Chinese and Thai authorities worked to bring Wang back to Thailand and eventually China.
Mr Hsieh said his experience was similar to Wang's.
He willingly flew to Bangkok in late December after responding to a Facebook ad for a performance gig in the country.
"It was a very standard ad for my industry, so I didn't suspect much," he said.
A car came and picked him up from Bangkok airport, as arranged.
By the time Mr Hsieh realised he might be in trouble, he was on a small boat, crossing the Moei river to Myanmar.
"That's when I realised that it was too late to run," he said.
Once inside the compound, he was told he would have to scam people, unless his family paid a ransom of $US30,000 ($48,000).
He was provided with training materials, including detailed back stories of his assigned social media personas to start scamming unwitting victims in what is known as "pig butchering".
In such schemes, fraudsters gain their victims' trust over time before eventually coaxing them into fraudulent financial schemes.
"In my office, we were told to focus on Australians," Mr Hsieh said.
He said the scammers primarily targeted the Chinese diaspora community via online community websites such as yeeyi.com, and also routinely targeted other ethnicities on social media platforms including Instagram with the aid of AI translation software.
Mr Hsieh said they posted ads either offering or seeking jobs and contacted potential victims through the information they left on the posts.
Mr Hsieh eventually managed to contact his friends for help via Instagram, using an account provided by his captors to conduct scam activities.
But in an unexpected turn of events, Mr Hsieh said the compound's managers told him in January his ransom had been paid and he was allowed to leave.
However, he said he did not know who paid the money.
"I honestly have no idea why I got released," he said.
"Maybe it has something to do with public pressure after my case was publicised by media."
A Meta spokesperson told the ABC the company would continue to invest in teams and technology to detect and stop scams.
"We recently announced several initiatives to prevent scams including the testing of facial recognition technology to identify and stop celeb-bait scams and the expansion of our partnership with the Australian Financial Crimes Exchange (AFCX) to share intelligence on scams," they said.
Last year, Meta also announced taking down more than 2 million accounts linked to scam centres in in Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, the United Arab Emirates and the Philippines.
The ABC has also approached yeeyi.com for comment.
Government accused of negligence
According to the Taipei Women's Rescue Foundation and others involved in helping online scam victims, at least 100 Taiwanese are still being held in Myanmar scam compounds, though the number could be much higher.
Some accuse the Taiwanese authorities of not doing enough to help them.
Sisters Chen Xiaoping and Chen Xiaoan are among them.
They went to the police and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) immediately after they found out in September that Chen Xiaoping's son was trapped in a Myanmar scam centre.
"There's no clear official process for handling these cases," Chen Xiaoan said.
The sisters asked to use a pseudonym in case the captors of Chen Xiaoping's son, who had managed to raise the alarm with those back home, learned he had been communicating with his family.
Chen Xiaoan said the police arrested her nephew's alleged recruiter in Taiwan, who was accused of offering him the opportunity "carry gold" from Thailand to Taiwan, a common euphemism for smuggling.
However, neither the police nor MOFA "had ever reached out to ask for information, much less providing updates", she said.
In December, the sisters sought help from Chang Chi-kai, a member of Taiwan's parliament who had helped other trafficking victims.
Mr Chang had a blunt assessment.
"Based on past experiences, the official channel is less effective than unofficial ones," he told them, suggesting several non-government organisations for the sisters to appeal to.
"Or try the triads."
According to local media reports, Taiwanese triads — Asia's version of the mafia — have been credited with facilitating negotiations between victim families and compound operators.
Wen Shaocheng, who was held in the same compound as Chen Xiaoan's nephew, recently returned to Taiwan after his father paid a $US50,000 ($80,000) ransom.
He said his family did contact the triads for help, but ended up negotiating directly themselves with the scam compound.
"The government didn't do much in helping me out," Mr Wen told the ABC.
Despite this, he said the authorities now wanted his help with the prosecution of human traffickers within Taiwan.
Sammy Chen, a businessman turned volunteer rescuer of human trafficking victims in South-East Asia, said Taiwan's official channels "basically" did not work.
He said the MOFA usually claimed it was a law enforcement issue while the National Police Agency claimed it was an international affairs issue.
Part of the reason for the inaction, he said, was Taiwan's lack of diplomatic recognition which meant it could not directly negotiate rescues with Myanmar or Thailand.
Sammy Chen said victims' families were often told to reach out to Taiwan's de facto embassies in Thailand and Myanmar but there was no coordination between the agencies.
Chen Xiaoan said this is what happened to her and her sister.
In 2023, Taiwan's Control Yuan, the supervisory and oversight branch of government, released a scathing report, finding the foreign ministry "failed to grasp the severity of Taiwanese trafficking cases in Cambodia" and was "delaying rescue".
In response to a request for comment from the ABC, the ministry rejected accusations it was not providing support to trafficking victims and said as of January 10 it had helped return 1,533 people safely to Taiwan.
In response, Sammy Chen said the authorities just provided a "pick up service" at the airport.
When asked by the ABC about the number of human trafficking victims awaiting rescue in Myanmar, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it did not track such figures.
The Criminal Investigation Bureau said the same, adding the issue fell under the foreign ministry's jurisdiction.
In a statement to the ABC, the National Police Agency said that rescuing trapped Taiwanese overseas fell under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Imperfect victims
Not all of those working as scammers in Myanmar come to be there unwittingly.
"Some go to the compounds to participate in the scam activities willingly, only to be shocked by levels of cruel mistreatment they receive when their performance doesn't meet the performance target set by their team leaders," said Sammy Chen, the anti-trafficking campaigner.
Some victims he had helped escape had willingly gone back, he said.
Hsieh Yueh-peng said some scammers lived comfortable, relatively unrestricted lives in the compounds.
"One colleague even showed me the inside of his locker," he said.
"It was full of cash."
Even for those unwittingly trapped in the compounds, the boundary between being a victim and a criminal can become murky over time.
"At first, they'll try to keep you under control with violence, then the brain washing starts," Mr Hsieh said.
He said some actually made a lot of money.
"This is why, after losing hope, some victims would stop resisting and actually cooperate," he said.
Both Mr Hsieh and Wen Shaocheng said they were concerned that if they stayed in the compounds too long they would be treated as criminals rather than victims.
Sharlene Chen from Humanity Research Consultancy, an anti-slavery organisation, said authorities in some countries still treated forced online fraud victims as criminals rather than trafficking victims.
"These victims were forced to work and commit crimes against their will, meeting several key indicators of modern slavery," she said.
For Chen Xiaoping, whose son is still trapped in Myanmar, this was an added concern during an "endlessly agonising wait".
"We will never be able to afford any ransom, and the government don't seem to care much about our situation," she said.
"We feel abandoned, completely hopeless."
