Tens of thousands of people, many of them Chinese, have been caught up in cyber scams based in Southeast Asia. Local and Chinese authorities have netted thousands of people in a crackdown on such schemes, but experts say they are failing to root out the local elites and criminal networks that are running the scams.
In this photo released by Zhang Hongliang, Zhang Hongliang poses for a selfie in Wuhan in central China’s Hubei province, on Oct. 19, 2023. Zhang is just one of tens of thousands caught up in the powerful reach of Chinese crime syndicates based across Southeast Asia running large-scale cyber scams. In this photo released by Xinhua News Agency, Myanmar police hand over five telecom and internet fraud suspects to Chinese police at Yangon International Airport in Yangon, Myanmar, Aug. 26, 2023.
In August, China, Thailand, Laos and Myanmar agreed to set up a joint police operations center to tackle cyber scams in the region. On Oct. 10, China’s Ministry of Public Security announced that its “Summer Operation” had successfully brought back 2,317 scam suspects from northern Myanmar to China. “From the vantage point of the Chinese government, it’s a source of extreme embarrassment that you have so many of these Chinese criminals operating all across Southeast Asia,” said Jason Tower, an expert on transnational crime with the United States Institute of Peace.
Zhang was working in Thailand and on a visa run to Laos when he met the man who lured him to the scam compound in Myanmar. Giving what he said was his last name, Gao, he claimed to be a broker and travel agent for Chinese living in Thailand. Zhang and his wife wanted extra money to pay for in vitro fertilization to have another child. Gao suggested he go work in Myawaddy, in eastern Myanmar’s Kayin state, teaching a local chef how to cook Chinese dishes in Gao’s new restaurant.
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