Instant messaging app WhatsApp has deleted more than 6.8 million accounts allegedly linked to a ‘pig-baiting’ scam centre worldwide.

For years, organised criminal networks, particularly in Southeast Asia, have been pushing thousands of people to commit online fraud.

These scam centres, run from countries such as Myanmar and Cambodia, lure people with fake jobs and turn them into virtual slaves in order to extort billions of dollars from innocent people around the world.

In ‘pig-baiting’ scams, criminals gain trust by creating romantic relationships with people online and then convince them to invest in various investment schemes, usually in the form of cryptocurrency.

These scams usually start with a text message or dating app Jet, and then move on to private messaging apps and eventually to payment or crypto platforms.