Casinos, high-rises and fraud: The BBC visits a city built on scams
31 comments
·February 7, 2025amiga386
On a related note, POGOs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine_offshore_gaming_ope...
The Philippines (under Duterte) said to Chinese criminals: Feel free to base your operations here and rip off your fellow Chinese, but don't rip off us Filipinos.
Then these POGO centres started scamming locals and Chinese alike, and staffed themselves with scam victims, using blackmail and torture to force them to work there and commit fraud.
Then one victim escaped:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-68562643
And then the whole world unraveled for local town mayor and Chinese spy, Alice Guo (that's not even her real name)
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/09/04/asia/philippines-alice-gu...
misantroop
Philippines is corrupt to the core as well, from courts to police to civilians. So the real reason why POGOs were thrown out of the country was that the didn't pay off the right people. Nothing gets done in Philippines without bribes.
yakkomajuri
The Chinese investment into strategic spots around the South China Sea & Gulf of Thailand is really interesting to witness.
I was at Sihanoukville (Cambodia) around 5 years ago and was surprised to find what was seemingly a Chinese city. There was a lot of dust, construction, and the city seemed like it was being raised out of the ground really quickly. Massive Chinese casinos and hotels were around and locals reported some casinos didn't even let them in. There were some whispers about shady stuff too.
I suppose if I were to go there today I'd find there are no more dirt roads and that the city is "fully built" given the rate at which these things happen. Would be cool to see.
commandersaki
Aren't these spots popular for running pig butchering scams? I don't know why BBC article didn't explicitly say this.
rob74
Well, they do say it, however they use a lot more words to do it:
> We were able to speak to a young woman who had been working in one of the scam centres a couple of weeks before our visit. She had not enjoyed it and been allowed to leave.
Her job, she said, was as part of the modelling team, made up mostly of attractive young women, who contact potential victims and try to build an intimate online relationship with them.
"The target is the elderly," she said. "You start a conversation like 'oh you look just like one of my friends'. Once you make friends you encourage them by sending pictures of yourself, sometimes wearing your night clothes."
Then, she explains, the conversation moves to get-rich-quick schemes, such as crypto investments, with the women claiming that's how they made a lot of money.
"When they feel close to you, you pass them on to the chatting section," she says. "The chatting people will continue messaging with the client, persuading them to buy shares in the crypto company."
rsynnott
Most people aren't familiar with the term, so it'll just be confusing. They do describe such a scam.
rhymeswithjazz
I can't remember if it was specifically about Shwe Kokko but Search Engine did an episode about a city with compounds like these.
https://pjvogt.substack.com/p/whos-behind-these-scammy-text-...
gpvos
TIL something: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_butchering_scam (I knew about the concept, just hadn't encountered the name.)
walrus01
Pig butchering among many other variations, like sextortion, fake FBI agent, advance fee fraud, fake real estate rental fraud, there's a whole myriad in their playbook.
redeux
I thought they were talking about Las Vegas until I read the article. I wonder if that was the intention when they titled the article.
willbw
I think you might be imposing an America-centric view on the BBC. I doubt that was the intention.
redeux
That’s fair, which is why I questioned whether that was the case rather than outright making the claim. You’re probably right.
lupusreal
It does describe Las Vegas perfectly, and I sincerely doubt your first thought after reading that headline was "its a British publication, so of course they mean that city in Myanmar."
Muromec
I did, because I also followed the Chinese actor kidnapping story from the Thai publications and know about the magical place across the river and it's history. South East Asia is historically fascinating. It's worth reading Burman diaries to put later writings of Orwell into some context.
seivan
[dead]
cjrp
Interesting, my first thought was Macao
pjc50
Las Vegas is not the only city with casinos.
lmm
No, but it's probably the most famous (at worst, second behind Monte Carlo).
Reason077
Monte Carlo isn't a city. It's a casino named after the Monaco neighbourhood where it's located:
snakeyjake
Las Vegas is an insignificant mote of dust compared to Macau when it comes to Casinos and gambling.
rsynnott
It describes, to a greater or lesser extent, a lot of places, but this one is certainly a particularly extreme example.
snakeyjake
>Jonathan Head
>South East Asia correspondent
>Reporting from Shwe Kokko, Myanmar
Before the article even started.
CodeCompost
Yep. I fell for clickbait, again.
rsynnott
You know those quasi-libertarian dreams of independent privately-owned city-states? Yeah, doesn't seem like such a good idea now, does it?
(I'm kind of surprised none of those crypto-libertarian groups have tried Myanmar, actually; it is, at least at the moment, particularly vulnerable to this sort of thing.)
Muromec
Does anybody dream of living in one or just dreams of owning the one? I fail to see the upside of living in somebody's pocket soviet union when places like Singapure actually exist.
lupusreal
Singapore certainly isn't for me, but I don't think you can call it unpopular by any means.
rob74
Depending on a local warlord to protect your independent privately owned city-state (in exchange for a healthy cut out of your profits, of course) doesn't sound like something that is likely to work long term.
But at least one well known crypto-libertarian seems to be making some money out of it:
> With Thailand cutting off power and telecommunications, electricity comes from diesel generators, which are expensive to run. And communications go through Elon Musk's Starlink satellite system, which is also very costly.
misja111
Libertarians would answer that in a True Libertarian World, gambling would be legal everywhere: so gamblers would have a rich choice between casino's and wouldn't have to resort to shady casino's with bad reputations, as they do now.
It's not just some scams. It's the darkest thing ever in the whole human history.
After China banned using of death row organs around 2014, the organ black market has moved to southeast Asia. There are estimated more than 100k victims (mostly Chinese) annually. Some of them may be released, if their families can afford the ransom. The remaining victims are treated like livestock. They are forced into doing scams to lure more people. Their blood is drawn monthly or even weekly for sales. They'll be tortured to death, if they try to run away. And finally, their organs will be harvested and sold, which most likely will also be the end of their lives.
United States once proposed to classify these organizations as terrorist organizations at UN but was denied by China.