Myanmar military shuts down a major cybercrime center, detains over 2k people
23 comments
·October 26, 2025randycupertino
EvanAnderson
I got a lot less snarky in my responses to scam text messages when I learned about the forced labor aspect. I just block the sender and go on, versus trying to bait them and waste their time.
For awhile I was asking "Is there someone I can contact for you?", but then I got worried that would get somebody a beating.
Mistletoe
“I love you” works well, because even if they are a piece of shit now, they need to hear it. No one is born bad. I’ve actually gotten them to break character with stuff like that sometimes.
datameta
I agree with the sentiment, but that phrase is too strong to be used in an unfamiliar setting and won't land the same way outside of the anglosphere
kuangtsao
I used to work in this industry. It pretty much all started with this group of 'Fujian bosses' who set up these 'scam parks.' They were trying to wash money back to China and came up with all sorts of ways to do it, usually by pretending to be online gambling companies.
The people actually doing the scams are on the Thai border, in Myanmar, and Cambodia. The IT and tech staff... well, some are in the parks, but a lot of them are in Taiwan. (I've also heard some are in Japan, singapore, malaysia and the UK).
The money gets laundered through all kinds of channels into different tax havens. It might pass through Taiwan—'cause, you know, China can't touch it there and the money looks clean—and then it goes on to China or Singapore... basically, right into those bosses' pockets.
Inside those parks, there's literally no law. I'm talking beatings, slavery, human trafficking, forcing people into prostitution, and death... that's just everyday stuff there.
As for me, I was working in Taiwan, so the worst thing that happened to me was just not getting the high pay they promised. Other than that, I was fine. This is all stuff I either heard from other people in the business or saw firsthand.
m101
"It [starlink] does not have licensed operations in Myanmar, but at least hundreds of terminals have been smuggled into the Southeast Asian nation."
So how do starlinks work in Myanmar if it's not licensed?
kmeisthax
[dead]
cruelness523
As early as a few years ago, these people were engaged in fraudulent activities in Southeast Asia. Most of them were Chinese, but the Chinese government was too soft and did not take effective measures against the fraud. As a result, for a long time, these people did not receive the approval of the dispute until a Korean appeared.
junaru
Source please on the Chinese and Korean claims.
yorwba
In 2021, the Chinese government went so far as to require all citizens in northern Myanmar to return to their hometowns in a attempt to combat the scams. It can hardly be called soft. https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3141474/beij...
sbarre
Seems like we're hearing a lot about this lately, it must have gotten real bad if there's suddenly all this movement to crack down on it.
fbu
Maybe some governments are sponsoring these activities near the border of a political rival. Like they did during the golden triangle era...
yieldcrv
Article is from the 20th so you're probably hearing about the same specific action
verdverm
There were related articles on the kidnapping / hostage like experience of some expats a few months back iirc
null
lysace
I heard that both sides of the ongoing civil war (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myanmar_civil_war_(2021%E2%80%...) work with these criminal organizations to secure foreign revenue for weapons purchases - but that it is primarily a junta-driven thing.
And that the people running them come from PRC Chinese organized crime (triads).
mouse_
What's Grandma supposed to do with all those Google Play gift cards now?
leosanchez
This is pig butchering scam. The Google Play scam mostly happens from West Bengal, India.
sysguest
idk maybe google is somewhat responsible here?
either their fraud-detection isn't working, or they're turning blind-eye here for profit?
Nextgrid
It's not actually the scammers that are redeeming the gift cards - instead they are in turn reselling the codes on marketplaces (to legitimate customers) for a small loss as a way of laundering them.
From Google's perspective - someone bought a gift card in the US, and redeemed it somewhere else in the US, aka the expected behavior of legitimate gift card usage.
HeatrayEnjoyer
Google has enough metadata to graph and deduce which are scams.
Hackbraten
Do NOT redeem!
This is a great interactive article about what it's like to be kidnapped and forced to work in these scam centers on the Myanmar border, lured by promise of jobs people are trapped, passports confiscated, phones stolen, 16-hour workdays spent defrauding victims online, cultivating fake relationships and pressuring them into investment or romance scams:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/17/world/asia/my...