Organized criminal networks in East and Southeast Asia employ a vast array of coded language with pronounced regional characteristics, distinct cultural connotations, and deep industry-specific verticality. For investigators and researchers—particularly those unfamiliar with the Chinese language and Chinese culture—this poses a substantial barrier to comprehension.

Bitrace plans to systematically disclose and decode this body of industry jargon to assist relevant personnel in carrying out their work more effectively. This article is the first installment in the series, providing an analysis of slang terminology used in the illegal cross-border human trafficking industry.

Entity-Related Terminology

Pankou (盘口)

Pankou (盘口) refers to the fraud operations entities within a scam compound. These entities are typically closed, high-pressure management enterprises. Due to the difficulty of recruiting employees through legal channels, Pankou resort extensively to illegal methods such as fraud and kidnapping to expand their workforce.

Consequently, telecom fraud is invariably accompanied by human trafficking activities.

Labor Recruiters (劳务商)

Labor Recruiters (劳务商) are entities that help Pankou "recruit" employees through illegal means. Since these entities typically open Public Groups on illegal cryptocurrency transaction guarantee platforms, Bitrace defines them as Human Trafficking Guarantee Merchants.

Sustained high-pressure crackdowns by Chinese law enforcement in recent years have forced these entities to operate exclusively outside China's borders.

Agents (中介)

Human Trafficking Agents (劳务中介) are illegal operatives located within China who collaborate with Human Trafficking Guarantee Merchants to help Pankou absorb personnel. Agents use overseas high-paying jobs as bait to lure victims to China's border regions and facilitate illegal border crossings, after which the merchant's Driver picks them up and transports them to the Pankou.

Throughout the entire process, the agent, merchant, and victim never meet in person, and drivers are rotated multiple times, enabling a high degree of operational complexity in coordination.

Human Trafficking Guarantee Platforms (劳务担保)

Human Trafficking Guarantee Platforms (劳务担保) are illegal entities specifically providing guarantee services for human trafficking transactions. Their basic service model involves collecting deposits from Human Trafficking Guarantee Merchants, then providing customer acquisition, promotion, and endorsement services while ensuring that merchants and agents can complete their transactions without either party defrauding the other.

These platforms are the linchpin that makes the aforementioned complex coordination possible.

Piaowu / Ticketing (票务)

Piaowu (票务) are entities that collaborate with Human Trafficking Agents to transport victims out of the country. They are responsible for covering victims' travel expenses—including airfare, accommodation, train tickets, meals, cigarettes, and alcohol—before the merchant's Driver takes over.

 When the merchant pays the agent, Piaowu receives a predetermined percentage of the fee, with the current market rate ranging from 30% to 40%.

Victim-Related Terminology

Piggy (猪猪/猪仔)

Piggy (猪猪/猪仔) is a derogatory term used by participants in the illegal cross-border human trafficking industry to refer to victims.

Premium (精品)

There exists a clear and standardized classification system for Piggy within the industry. Han Chinese males aged 20 to 35 who are physically healthy and possess a certain level of education are referred to as Premium (精品). Regardless of the trafficking route, they command the highest relative prices. 

At the peak of telecom fraud activity in 2025, the price of a single Premium Piggy could easily exceed USD 20,000.

Leftover (边角料)

The opposite of Premium is Leftover (边角料). Victims aged 18–20 and 35–40 fall into this category. Their market price is substantially lower than that of Premium victims, only slightly exceeding that of minors, women, ethnic minorities, and individuals from Yunnan.

PII / Personally Identifiable Information (资料)

PII (资料, short for Personally Identifiable Information) is another critical criterion in determining a victim's price. Before a transaction takes place, the agent must provide the merchant with at minimum documentation proving the victim's physical health and educational qualifications. The former is typically a recent medical examination report, while the latter is a video of the victim typing on a keyboard with their face visible. The baseline requirements are that the victim must be free of infectious diseases or other serious medical conditions and be capable of typing more than 30 Chinese characters per minute.

On occasion, merchants or agents will also pay specialized Doxxing Query Guarantee Merchants to obtain a victim's PII through illegal means.

Job Interview (面试)

During the trafficking process, victims face two Job Interviews (面试). The first takes place after the victim exits the country, when the merchant's Driver verifies basic information, including whether the physical person matches their documentation and whether the victim has any significant physical abnormalities (large-scale tattoos, missing limbs, speech impediments, etc.). If everything checks out, some merchants may then request the guarantee platform to intercede and settle payment with the agent.

The second interview occurs after the victim is delivered to the Pankou, where the Pankou requires the victim to type on a computer on the spot and conducts a thorough review of other conditions. Once the victim passes the interview, the Pankou pays the merchant; if not, the victim is rejected.

Victims who fail the interview are typically resold to other compounds, which is why investigators will observe on-chain transfers between two merchant addresses.

Trafficking Methodology

Terminology

Passport & Side-road (护照&小路)

Passport (护照) and Side-road (小路) refer to two distinct methods by which victims exit the country. Passport refers to victims obtaining visas and purchasing air tickets through legal means. Currently, a key destination for this route is Thailand, where victims are kidnapped immediately upon landing.

Side-road refers to victims exiting the country through illegal means, such as crossing mountains on foot or using small motorized vehicles at night, or blending into legal border trade channels using forged documents. The destinations for Side-road routes are typically Pankou located along the China-Myanmar border in Myanmar, with the entire trafficking process often completed within a matter of hours. 

Due to this distinction, Passport victims command prices several times higher than Side-road victims.

Wash (洗)

Wash (洗), short for brainwashing (洗脑), refers to the practice of deceiving victims during the human trafficking process. For example, enticing victims to cross the border illegally by offering high-paying but unlawful job opportunities is called Wash Side-road (洗小路); whitewashing the nature of Pankou work and living conditions to persuade victims to abandon resistance is called Wash Voluntary (洗自愿).

Regardless of the stage or type of deception involved, the objective of Wash is to keep victims in a state of low vigilance throughout the trafficking process, ensuring their smooth delivery into the Pankou while minimizing the use of violence to reduce costs.

Qiangya / Forced Restraint (强压)

The use of violent means during transport—including verbal intimidation or physical assault—is known in the industry as Qiangya (强压). The standard configuration is a three-person team: one person drives, while the other two sit on either side of the victim in the back seat. In most cases, victims, threatened with knives or even firearms, do not resist violently. However, there are occasional cases where physically strong victims have fought off all three individuals and successfully escaped, as well as tragedies where victims who resisted were beaten to death.

Under industry rules, regardless of whether a victim escapes or is killed, the merchant must compensate the agent. Relevant parties typically request the guarantee platform to Arbitrate the matter and directly transfer a portion of the merchant's posted deposit to the agent and Piaowu.

 Notably, in modern standard Chinese, the compound 强压 (Qiangya) does not carry the meaning of coercion or forcible restraint. Bitrace hypothesizes that the original term may have been 强押 (Qiangya), a term commonly used in Taiwan that explicitly denotes the use of violence, coercion, or intimidation as illegal means to restrict another person's freedom against their will. The two terms are homophonous, and extensive interchange between them is observed within the industry.

Naked Running (裸奔)

Naked Running (裸奔), as distinct from transactions involving a guarantee platform, refers to human trafficking activities conducted without any protective measures. After a Human Trafficking Agent located within China lures the victim abroad and delivers them to an overseas Human Trafficking Merchant, the merchant directly pays the agent's designated receiving address. Since the two parties do not meet in person, there is a mutual risk of deception. As such, this transaction method carries extremely high risk, and only merchants with a relatively strong industry reputation will support Naked Running transactions in significant volume.

Settlement-Related Terminology

U

U is shorthand for the U.S. dollar stablecoin Tether (USDT). In the context of human trafficking, it specifically refers to TRC20 USDT issued on the TRON network, as well as USDT deposits held on centralized exchanges or payment tools. It is the primary unit of account and payment used by industry participants.

Given the exchange rate calculations between the U.S. dollar stablecoin and the Chinese yuan, parties typically reference OTC listing prices on the OKX and HTX exchanges before settlement.

hb

hb is a transfer command used in Fullylight Wallet (福利来钱包), which operates as a Telegram Mini App. It is an alphabetic abbreviation of the Chinese term Hongbao (红包, meaning Red Packet). The entity has integrated Telegram Bot functionality into communities, allowing users who have bound their Telegram ID to transfer funds via social commands. For example, typing "@target_user hb 188u" in a community chat initiates a transfer.

Fullylight Wallet is one of the most popular crypto payment tools currently circulating in the black and gray market community following the collapse of Huionepay. This command has even evolved into a proprietary verb, widely used in begging contexts—"Bro, could you hb me a little?"

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