In March, an offer to teach Chinese cooking at a restaurant led him into a cybercrime operation in Myanmar. Instead of teaching cooking, he was tasked with luring Chinese people into investing their savings in fake investment schemes through social media platforms.
Myanmar handed over five online fraud suspects to Chinese police at Yangon International Airport on August 26, 2023. Photo: Xinhua News Agency
Zhang is one of tens of thousands of people, most but not all Chinese, who have been trapped in online scam networks run by powerful Chinese criminal organizations in Southeast Asia.
Regional and Chinese authorities have arrested thousands in a crackdown, but experts say they cannot eradicate the problem completely and criminal networks will inevitably continue to carry out these schemes.
When scams are stopped in one place, they often reappear elsewhere. This problem has baffled Chinese authorities, who have warned citizens traveling to Southeast Asia that they may be scammed or abducted and drawn into online fraud.
In recent years, the media has uncovered numerous cases of young people being lured to Cambodia or Myanmar with promises of high-paying jobs, only to be forced into fraudulent activities . Rescue organizations report that people are frequently beaten or subjected to physical punishment.
In August, China, Thailand, Laos, and Myanmar agreed to establish a joint police operations center to address cyber fraud cases in the region. On October 10, China's Ministry of Public Security announced that its "Summer Campaign" had successfully brought 2,317 fraud suspects from Myanmar back to China.
China refers to such individuals as suspects, although experts believe that most are victims forced to work for criminals.
These "branches," based in countries like Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia, are run by Chinese bosses along with local elites.
Myanmar's border regions have long been magnets for crime due to lax law enforcement. Such areas are often under the control of ethnic minority armed groups, some of which collaborate with organized crime gangs.
Experts say that, overall, law enforcement actions appear to be somewhat ineffective. Groups currently based in Myanmar were originally based in Cambodia. When Cambodia cracked down on illegal online gambling and casinos in 2019, many groups moved to areas with less regulatory oversight in Myanmar. Some have been taken over by rival gangs.
Mai Vân (according to AP, Xinhua News Agency)
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