Thousands in Limbo as Thailand Fights Scam Hubs on Two Fronts

Thailand is fighting scam centres on at least two fronts, as serious organized crime has become entrenched in neighbouring countries. Analysts say the huge size of these compounds – said to be the most lucrative in Myanmar and Cambodia – pose a threat even to US security.

The protracted civil war in Myanmar, now in its fifth year, has opened the door to Chinese criminal networks who have set up shop in Myawaddy and areas further south on the Thai-Myanmar border.

These groups – pushed out of mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau over the past decade by Xi Jinping’s relentless war on corruption – have also established bases in pockets of Cambodia and northern Laos in recent years, all of which are having negative impacts on Thai citizens, and people all across the world.

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Some of the gangs driven out of Lashio and sites near China in northern Myanmar late last year are believed to have moved south to a lawless area around Myawaddy, opposite the Thai border town of Mae Sot. One of the bigger sites in that township was targeted in a high-profile crackdown launched last week by Thai and Chinese authorities.

Pressure from Beijing and Bangkok on a Burmese Karen warlord known as Chit Thu, who heads a militia that controls the enclave where dozens of scam compounds have been set up, spurred the release of thousands of foreign citizens held in the township.

That led to the rescue of some 7,141 people, two thirds of them from China, plus others from over two dozen countries.

In humanitarian terms, that should be an enormous relief for the people released, and a “win” the non-government groups involved and Thai officials – but experts have warned that this was only an initial partial victory, considering the huge scale of the problem.

Hundreds of people alleging human trafficking, imprisonment and torture have been flown back to China, but the processing of thousands more has been a drawn-out and tedious process, hampered by slow responses from the many governments asked to help relocate their citizens.

Key source of funds for Burmese junta

It has also led to the realization that this is an extremely difficult problem to manage – partly because of the huge number of people involved, but also because the scam centres are highly lucrative and are a key source of illicit funds for the ruthless military regime waging a desperate battle for survival in what has become the most serious threat to its existence since the Second World War.

A rescue mission was also staged to help release about 230 foreigners from a scam call centre in Poipet, a notorious town on Thailand’s eastern border with Cambodian border. Thai officials there reportedly struggled to determine which people were scammers (people who volunteered to work at the call centres) and those who were victims of trafficking.

Experts on the criminal hubs say the number of people being repatriated from Myawaddy is just a fraction of the more than 120,000 controlled by criminal syndicates in compounds on Myanmar’s southwestern border with Thailand.

Rangsiman Rome, chair of the Thai parliament’s committee on national security and border affairs, has been a leading voice in calls for action against border boiler rooms that have defrauded Thais of hundreds of millions of dollars. He told Reuters that less than 10,000 of the 300,000 people estimated to work in the scam compounds had been rescued.

“It means like the empire of the scam is still there… we’re just shaking them,” he was quoted as saying.

Media reports about the abduction of a Chinese actor in January dented Thailand’s reputation as a safe destination for Chinese tourists and led to demands for more Chinese citizens to be rescued. It also created leverage for Beijing to push for a security presence in Thailand to lead a crackdown on the scam centres.

On February 16, Thai authorities cut electricity, internet access and deliveries of oil and gas to the centres over the Moei River, which forms the border between Myawaddy and Mae Sot town. They also deployed soldiers and border police to try to curb illegal border crossings linked to the crime groups.

Thais rescued in Myawaddy have been brought home, but foreigners are still waiting in Myanmar for their embassies to arrange their return, as Thai officials are said to be reluctant to allow them to cross into Thailand if the destination countries are not ready to receive them, a report in the Bangkok Post said late last week.

Shwe Kokko scam centre in Myawaddy, seen from the Thai side of the border (Wikipedia).

‘Strategic concession to avoid arrest’

Human trafficking expert Jacob Sims said the rescue effort looked to be “a strategic move by the Karen Border Guard Force (BGF) and Democratic Karen Benevolent Army (DKBA) – the two, closely related, militia groups which control the territory where the compounds exist – not to eradicate transnational cybercrime from their territory but to protect its sustainable presence there.”

“It is also important to note that, even at such a scale, this release does not signal reform but is more likely to serve as a pressure relief mechanism for the militia groups.” Given the centres’ profit margins, Sims said the loss of 10,000 coerced workers would not destabilize the industry.

Indeed, Sims believed Thai officials and non-government groups would have their hands full dealing with the over 7,000 victims, as many come from countries without the resources to repatriate them, but also because of entrenched corruption among officials on the Thai side.

Chinese officials were far more aware of the huge financial losses created by the scam syndicates than their Western counterparts, but he said there appeared to be minimal screening of people repatriated to China and little information shared later with other international police bodies.

Cambodia’s ‘most lucrative industry’

Analyst Jason Tower, from the US Institute for Peace, said attempts had been made to crack down on the Myawaddy call centres over the past two years, but “crime groups managed to establish new connections from Thailand and arranged additional connectivity from Myanmar telecoms.”

And despite the crackdown, scamming was still going on. Indeed, criminal syndicates at the notorious Shwe Kokko Yatai New City may have decided to “pivot away from China,” because they are now reportedly “eager to find individuals with English proficiency to try to lure Americans and Indians.”

He feared the 7,000 people rescued at Myawaddy were “mainly mostly unwilling or poorly performing scammers .. handed over to the BGF or the DKBA” and that the rescue was permitted to dissuade Thai authorities from issuing arrest warrants for leaders such as Chit Thu.

Tower said: “The situation remains uncertain for tens of thousands of victims trafficked into scam compounds and subjected to torture and abuse.

“Most countries are just becoming aware of the scale of losses associated with these new forms of scams and their national security implications; others focus primarily on warning the public about scams or trying to take initial steps to address the human trafficking behind them.

“At the regional level, multilateral bodies have begun pushing for stronger measures to disrupt the syndicates but face serious resistance. This stems particularly from countries where the criminal actors are deeply embedded and criminal profits constitute a major part of the economy such as Myanmar and Cambodia.”

He fears the scam syndicates have become a “threat to US security,” as they steal billions of dollars from people across America. Thousands of people were filing complaints with the FBI, and US law enforcers were overwhelmed by these scams.

China, he said, “is creating incentives for criminal groups to target the US.”

For Sims, the situation in Cambodia seemed more intractable, he said, because crime hubs have allegedly become the country’s “single most lucrative industry and the state-party’s core patrimonial resource” and thus “protected by a sovereign shield.”

Given the potential risks to Thai citizens and further incidents that could damage its reputation as a safe tourist destination, it’s perhaps not surprisingly that the Thai government is now pondering whether to build a wall on part of the Cambodian border to prevent people being lured across its eastern border into scam centres in Poipet.