After losing his work due to the COVID-19 outbreak, Zhang Hongliang, a former restaurant manager in central China, accepted several jobs both inside and outside of China to support his family.
He entered a cyberscam compound in Myanmar in March after receiving a job offer to teach Chinese cooking at a restaurant. There, he was told to use social media to trick Chinese into parting with their cash for fictitious investment schemes.
Zhang is one of the tens of thousands of victims—mostly Chinese, but not exclusively—who have fallen victim to Southeast Asian cyberscam networks operated by major Chinese crime syndicates. Thousands of people have been apprehended by local and Chinese officials as part of a crackdown, but analysts claim they are failing to bring down the local elites and criminal organizations who are obligated to continue running the schemes.
When fraud schemes are exposed elsewhere, they frequently just reappear somewhere else. The issue is embarrassing for Beijing and is preventing common Chinese citizens from visiting Southeast Asia out of concern that they would be conned, kidnapped, or involved in a cyber scam operation.
Young individuals have been attracted to locations in Cambodia or Myanmar for high-paying professions in recent years, according to media reports, only to be made to work as con artists. Rescue organizations claim that if they don’t perform properly, victims are often physically punished by being beaten or made to do laps.
To combat cyber fraud in the region, China, Thailand, Laos, and Myanmar decided to establish a unified police operations center in August. The “Summer Operation” of China’s Ministry of Public Security had successfully returned 2,317 fraud suspects from northern Myanmar to China, the ministry reported on October 10.
Although analysts claim that the majority of these people are victims who were coerced into working for criminals, China refers to them as suspects. They wonder how they will be treated when they return to China.
Chinese managers work closely with the local elites in nations like Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia to run the programs there. Many are headquartered in locations where China has supported significant building projects through the Belt and Road Initiative, which is the brainchild of president Xi Jinping.
Due to inadequate law enforcement, Myanmar’s border regions have long been a draw for criminals, historically including narcotics makers and traffickers. Armed ethnic minority organizations that are either hostile to or supportive of Myanmar’s central government typically control these areas. Some work with gangs that are part of organized crime.
According to Jason Tower, a transnational crime expert with the United States Institute of Peace, “from the Chinese government’s perspective, it’s a source of extreme embarrassment that you have so many of these Chinese criminals operating all across Southeast Asia.”
The syndicates are also infamous for “pig butchering” scams, in which con artists lure victims into internet romances before tricking them into investing their money in fraudulent schemes from afar.
Chinese and non-Chinese people are the two groups into which the con artists split their victims. They deceive the people they speak with on the phone or online into parting with their money by using scripts, pictures of models and influencers, and translation software. There are victims everywhere in the world.
In a 2020 report produced for the United States Institute of Peace, Tower described connections between criminals and Chinese state companies, think institutes, and government officials. The criminals have “ridden on the shoulders of the Belt and Road Initiative,” according to Tower.
When Zhang met the man who led him to the scam property in Myanmar, he was working in Thailand and attempting to get a visa to Laos. He identified himself as a broker and travel agency for Chinese people residing in Thailand by using what he claimed to be his last name, Gao. To pay for in vitro fertilization so they may have another kid, Zhang and his wife needed additional funds. Gao proposed that he go work in Myawaddy, in the Kayin state of eastern Myanmar, where he could train a local chef to prepare Chinese food in Gao’s new restaurant. Zhang would receive twice as much money as she did in China.
Zhao was cautious. Military-run Myanmar has been engulfed in civil war since a coup in 2021. However, Gao reassured him that he wouldn’t be acting illegally and said that the restaurant would be packed with patrons because the neighborhood was home to numerous cyberscam companies.
That might have been concerning, but Zhang didn’t comprehend his situation until he arrived in Myanmar. He said there was a family issue and wanted to return home. He managed to save up about 40,000 yuan ($5,472) from his family to settle the debt Gao said he owed him. Then, one night, he snuck into Thailand by swimming across the Moei River. There, he handed himself in to Thai police, who then informed the Chinese Embassy.
Zhang displayed to the AP documents of his Thai Immigration police deportation notice and a temporary ID card. When he returned to China in late June, Chinese police questioned him but did not detain him. He has been sharing his experience on Douyin, the Chinese equivalent of TikTok, to warn others about the dangers, and he claims he frequently receives calls from people whose relatives have fallen victim to online scams.
We all left with such a fantastic sense of hope, but as soon as we did, reality hit us square in the face, he said.
A total of 4,000 suspects have been detained by China and sent back to that country.
In conjunction with the Myanmar government, the Ministry of Public Security has reportedly achieved “breakthrough results” through operations. They revealed on Monday that they had returned 2,349 more persons. A faxed request for comment received no response from the ministry.
One former chef, age 31, who was smuggled into Myanmar’s Wa State earlier this year, claimed to have witnessed his firm quietly handing over four people to Chinese authorities in September. The individual, who was transported into Myanmar and eventually rescued by a nonprofit, claimed that other businesses followed suit. He wished to remain anonymous for fear of government reprisals, and The Associated Press was unable to independently confirm his story.
According to analysts, the enforcement operations don’t appear to be very thorough overall. The groups that are now based in Myanmar were once in Cambodia. In 2019, when Cambodia began to tighten down on online gambling networks and illegal casinos, many of the groups simply relocated to Myanmar, which is less heavily policed. Some were seized by competing gangs.
According to Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political science professor at Chulalongkorn University in Thailand, China’s efforts to improve its reputation have so far made little progress.
He claimed that although you may put a stop to the signs and symptoms that you can observe in borderland areas, “they will return unless you really have a sustained effort.”
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