HOOK. BAIT. KILL.
Scam City
A production of Civic Studios
In partnership with Anti-Slavery International
A microdrama in 10 episodes. Each one runs under three minutes.
Trapped inside a Cambodian scam compound, trafficked Maya and conflicted insider Jairam gamble on a single chance to contact the outside world, risking everything for one message to land in the right hands: the Indian Embassy.
In this factory of digital deception, every call follows a script, every mistake comes with a price, and every day begins with the same lie: I’m safe. Work is good. Jairam, higher up in the hierarchy, is steady and hard to read. He becomes Maya’s unlikely guide, driven less by kindness than by his own interests.
Why Scam City
Why this series
While researching cyber-scams, we kept hitting the same fact: a lot of the people running them were trafficked into the job and are held there by force.
Scam City tells it from inside the compound, without letting go of the harm done to the person on the other end of the call.
Why now
Cyberslavery is a recent form of modern slavery and barely anyone is talking about it. There is almost nothing that explains it to a general audience, and India is among the worst-hit countries.
A live-action series would have taken years. We wanted it out now, in the format young audiences already watch: one vertical episode a day, each one ending on a hook.
How and why we used AI
AI-assisted animation let a small team make a daily series on a short timeline and a small budget. It sped the work up. It did not make the calls.
- Direction
- Writing
- Illustration & original visuals
- Editing
- Image-to-video generation
- Voicing
With Anti-Slavery International
Anti-Slavery International works on modern slavery every day, so viewers had somewhere to go with what they had just watched. Anyone who commented got a DM with more on cyberslavery and a link to ASI.
Impact
Campaign window: 25 March to 25 April 2026
What the comments said
- Intent to act64.7%
- Appreciation24.1%
- Irrelevant / spam8.4%
- Awareness1%
- Criticism1%
- Emotional resonance1%
People shared episodes as warnings, tagged family and posted their own scam stories. Early comments were mostly shock. By the end, viewers were invested in Maya, and Episode 10 drew the most comments of the season.
Thanks for spreading awareness. I hope this reaches a large number of people.Viewer, Episode 3
Realising that it's based on true events is extremely heartbreaking.Viewer, Episode 6
From curiosity to action
Comments turned into clicks. Each one got an automated reply with context on cyberslavery and a route to Anti-Slavery International, and ASI’s traffic from India rose sharply.
Social media engagement
Between the episodes
Character cards for Maya, Jairam, Zhong, Toni and Mona, explainers on scam lingo, and posts linking the show to real cases ran alongside the episodes from 25 March to 14 April 2026.
Awards and Recognition
Wins
- Best Microdrama Series
- Best AI Vertical Series
- Best Message
Official selections
AI International Micro-Drama Film Festival
Vertical Shorts Festival
Tijuana Vertical Film Festival
Scam City is a work of fiction based on multiple true events.