Irrawaddy-Oct 17
Scam compounds continue to thrive long after a highly publicized international crackdown in February, and the cut-off of electricity, gasoline, and internet to Karen State’s Myawaddy. Thai lawmaker Kannavee Suebsang, who led the repatriation process of the many foreigners arrested there, was interviewed on the bank of the Moei River that forms the border between Thailand and Myanmar. “We can even hear the roar of the generators they are using,” he said. “They have never left or stopped”. One prominent scam business, newly relocated from Laos and suggestively called Golden Cobra’s Saffron Flower Forest, features a modern four-story circular office equipped with hundreds of computers, an extensive collection of mobile phones, and a secure internet connection. Over five hundred workers labor under a Chinese management team who conduct their daily tasks through Google Translate and a Telegram group chat. The company appears well-organized, and every worker wears an ID card with the logo of a mythical lion over their chest. But the job description is stark: to scam unsuspecting people. “We start by creating fake social profiles, taking random pictures and videos from the internet, then making them our own,” one Vietnamese worker explains. “Each account should be active on multiple platforms, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook, just like everyone else. We work nine to 10 hours a day just doing this.” Every worker in his section will have two phones each to work on, with a crew standing by to recharge them. The compound is located in the heart of Yulong Bay Park, north of Myawaddy town, and has been going since 2022, according to Justice for Myanmar, a covert activist group that investigates and exposes the Myanmar military’s business networks and corruption. That makes it the nearest scam town to Thailand, just next door to downtown Mae Sot, while the notorious scam cities of Shwe Kokko, KK Park, or Tai Chang are further away. Yet Yulong Bay Park was never touched by the crackdown. The 2024 Global State of Scams Report reveals that in 2023 alone, scams siphoned off a staggering US$1.03 trillion globally. Read more at:
