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:
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.
“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.
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.
> 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.
Funny how the banks let these money launderers go on with their activities for years, most likely because they paid the banks their share of fees and commissions.
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.
The vast majority of these are going to turn into AI bots shortly if they aren’t going strong already. The human (slave) in the loop will be there for big fish or to finish the job.
Wish I could give your comment 10 more upvotes for visibility.
This is Myanmar military trying to do field work for China. China is the one who allowed these militias to thrive in the border areas and they have been arming them for decades. This particular operation happens in Myawaddy, which is in lower eastern part of Myanmar close to Thailand, but not in northeastern Myanmar closer to China, because Myanmar military dare only touch the militia there. It helps that the accused collaborators of these scam centers in the lower east part of Myanmar are Kayin ethnic militia, who--unlike Wa or Kokang--aren't as Chinese, and thus, China doesn't care. Also, China is now 100% backing the military regime (which staged a coup around 2021) in Myanmar, so this is like shooting two birds with one stone (i.e., get rid of scam centers for China, while helping Myanmar's brutal military to remove an income source of one of the non-ethnically Chinese militia).
Basically, China is getting what it sowed and now that its citizens are being impacted, it's asking its lapdog, Burmese military, to do the clean-up for them selectively.
PRC citizens were always impacted, these scam centers literally started (by twnese org crime) to target mainland retirees.
PRC would love for Junta to dismantle Kokang / northern scam centers but Junta couldn't because domestic factional power issues vs Northern states. The TLDR is scam centers are protected by pro Junta Kokang faction (BGF), so PRC got tired of Junta waffling and decided to support anti Junta three brotherhood alliance (aka rebels) who went HAM on the scam centers while PRC did military exercises to tell juntas to fuck off and understand PRC willing to patronize other internal players if junta doesn't play ball. Last year's 1027 operation only happened because PRC lost patience with Juntas and now Juntas more keen to help PRC deal vs scam centers (well at least performatively since they still need it for funding) because they know if they did nothing PRC will shop around and empower other players during civil war.
Well it's a sinosphere (insert one china joke) organized crime thing.
TLDR Taiwanese organized pioneered telco fraud 20 years ago, started third country scam call centers, primarily targetting tech illiterate PRC retirees. PRC/HK org crime saw how profitable, scaled up, ande more sophisticated (pig butcher + crypto to evade capital controls), targetted global Chinese diasphora. PRC cracks down domestically. They move to Myanmar / south eat asia, partner with local armed groups. Taiwanese call centers still around, but they're squeezed to other part of big butcher scacm chain, i.e. trafficking people. Anyway, every once in awhile their activities piss enough neighbours off especially PRC off that actual state power like junta has to intervenene.
I use different accounts for different subjects, well I use siloed account for PRC geopolitics, precisely because people challenged on PRC literacy likes to dig through accounts and be wierd about it.
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.
Gift cards are an idea whose time has passed. All they seem useful now is for scams and laundering money. All this plastic waste and fraud, so that a few legit customers can turn general-purpose money into company-specific money. Ridiculous product that should go away.
Absolutely agreed. But there’s a huge “legal” scam industry around it (essentially you are converting universal, fungible currency into scrip with an expiration date and strings attached), on top of which the illegal scam industry builds on (both sides benefit off each other).
> From Google's perspective - someone bought a gift card in the US, and redeemed it somewhere else in the US
hmm really? is this coming from a google PR firm or what? if that's the google's "perspective", unfortunately that means google is really technically inept or morally corrupt enough to watch a lot of people, including Americans, go thru the torture and being incinerated.
if Google receives a lot of "I was scammed into this" from whoever bought the giftcard, doesn't google have the responsibility to ask the giftcard user where they got that redeem code from?
At least warn them several times, and then cut those buyers too?
that's the worst justification of a big corp imaginable -- I mean, that alone justifies a congressional hearing, and could mount to a deluge of negative media press:
> if Google receives a lot of "I was scammed into this" from whoever bought the giftcard
Google doesn't sell the cards directly - at least not the ones purchased at the supermarket and used for scamming. There's a scummy industry of middlemen that handles this - that's why every store can sell basically every gift card; they don't have their PoS interact with every single vendor's API, they delegate to a middleman. So Google gets very limited data at purchase time, and is not technically the merchant selling the goods in this case.
> doesn't google have the responsibility to ask the giftcard user where they got that redeem code from
What will that change in practice? They have 2 options: either accept any answer, and nothing changes, or decline some answers, meaning either legitimate usage gets disrupted or the sites laundering the cards will just tell you the "right" answers to say.
> At least warn them several times, and then cut those buyers too?
Most buyers are one-time users; it's a relatively niche market. Mostly teens/etc who don't have their own payment card or are willing to go through the whole hassle for a small discount. As per the above, cutting people off would likely hinder legitimate usage.
Ideally the whole "gift card" industry just goes away as there's no good reason to have it when we already have the ultimate form of "gift card" in the form of money... but until then, even if Google were to step out of the game someone else will step in (the company issuing the cards isn't directly involved, their gift card is just used as a negotiable instrument in lieu of cash during the scam transaction, so any company's will do).
> has skin in the Cambodian scams
Cambodia/etc is pig butchering/fake investment scams. Gift cards and redeeming is exclusively Indians targeting the US market (in the UK they have money mules to launder actual bank transfers, so no need for gift cards).
well, even if they are, if google got scam-report, then isn't google obliged to start some investigation? are you ok with "well that's too bad you're scammed"?
> Gift cards and redeeming is exclusively Indians targeting the US market (in the UK they have money mules to launder actual bank transfers, so no need for gift cards).
well nope it's a thing everywhere -- even in some east-asian country, there's a public advertisement targeting convenient-store workers: "don't give google redeem code even if the person claims to work for the cvs chain"
AND...
> Google doesn't sell the cards directly - at least not the ones purchased at the supermarket and used for scamming.
wow... ok so where does that "redeem card" come from? are you saying stores can generate those redeem codes?
...something doesn't seem right here...?
> Ideally the whole "gift card" industry just goes away as there's no good reason to have it when we already have the ultimate form of "gift card" in the form of money... but until then, even if Google were to step out of the game someone else will step in (the company issuing the cards isn't directly involved, their gift card is just used as a negotiable instrument in lieu of cash during the scam transaction, so any company's will do).
wtf is this... are we talking about some random mom&pop store-issued giftcards?
is Google a mom&pop store? is the "google doing a giftcard biz" so valuable enough to license them turning blind-eye?
> Cambodia/etc is pig butchering/fake investment scams
cambodian operation is massive enough that it INCLUDES google-giftcard scheme.
idk, all this adds up to one thing: google needs to replace whatever PR firm it's using
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...
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.
“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.
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
Yeah, I'd go for something like "despite what you have to do, you still matter".
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.
> 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.
Singapore cracked down on a huge part of that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Singapore_money_launderin...
Funny how the banks let these money launderers go on with their activities for years, most likely because they paid the banks their share of fees and commissions.
That's alright, when one falls, 3 others from China will be come in and restart the scheme anew.
they use crypto for part of the money, too. I even heard some of the guys in the industry back then got paid in USDT.
I also recommend the Scam Factory podcast:
https://open.spotify.com/show/2cfjCS28vx1MVoukNjpINt
Shutdown because they either stopped paying their dues or didn't agree to the recent increase
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.
Wasn’t that it was soft, it was actually actively assisting the ops
Source please on the Chinese and Korean claims.
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...
"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?
That is a good question. https://starlink.com/map shows neither Myanmar, Thailand or Laos having coverage.
Perhaps they were using the "roam" version (https://starlink.com/roam), which seems to work pretty much anywhere.
SpaceX acknowledged the use that has apparently moved to cut service for some scam camps: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpd2e5541d1o
The vast majority of these are going to turn into AI bots shortly if they aren’t going strong already. The human (slave) in the loop will be there for big fish or to finish the job.
This sounds like an absolutely great win for humans then. Go AI!
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.
Maybe some governments are sponsoring these activities near the border of a political rival. Like they did during the golden triangle era...
Article is from the 20th so you're probably hearing about the same specific action
There were related articles on the kidnapping / hostage like experience of some expats a few months back iirc
Probably the Belarusian woman who ended up kidnapped, murdered, and dismembered in Myanmar.
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).
Wish I could give your comment 10 more upvotes for visibility.
This is Myanmar military trying to do field work for China. China is the one who allowed these militias to thrive in the border areas and they have been arming them for decades. This particular operation happens in Myawaddy, which is in lower eastern part of Myanmar close to Thailand, but not in northeastern Myanmar closer to China, because Myanmar military dare only touch the militia there. It helps that the accused collaborators of these scam centers in the lower east part of Myanmar are Kayin ethnic militia, who--unlike Wa or Kokang--aren't as Chinese, and thus, China doesn't care. Also, China is now 100% backing the military regime (which staged a coup around 2021) in Myanmar, so this is like shooting two birds with one stone (i.e., get rid of scam centers for China, while helping Myanmar's brutal military to remove an income source of one of the non-ethnically Chinese militia).
The military dares not assault the northeastern militias like Wa [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Wa_State_Army ], Kokang militia [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myanmar_National_Democratic_Al... ] because these guys are truly backed (and enabled) by China. There was a raid by Myanmar military in northeastern part (close to China) about a year ago [ https://www.rfa.org/english/myanmar/2024/11/20/shan-state-wa... ] and that was backed by China. Otherwise, Myanmar military dares not do that.
Basically, China is getting what it sowed and now that its citizens are being impacted, it's asking its lapdog, Burmese military, to do the clean-up for them selectively.
> now that its citizens are being impacted
PRC citizens were always impacted, these scam centers literally started (by twnese org crime) to target mainland retirees.
PRC would love for Junta to dismantle Kokang / northern scam centers but Junta couldn't because domestic factional power issues vs Northern states. The TLDR is scam centers are protected by pro Junta Kokang faction (BGF), so PRC got tired of Junta waffling and decided to support anti Junta three brotherhood alliance (aka rebels) who went HAM on the scam centers while PRC did military exercises to tell juntas to fuck off and understand PRC willing to patronize other internal players if junta doesn't play ball. Last year's 1027 operation only happened because PRC lost patience with Juntas and now Juntas more keen to help PRC deal vs scam centers (well at least performatively since they still need it for funding) because they know if they did nothing PRC will shop around and empower other players during civil war.
>PRC Chinese organized crime (triads)
Well it's a sinosphere (insert one china joke) organized crime thing.
TLDR Taiwanese organized pioneered telco fraud 20 years ago, started third country scam call centers, primarily targetting tech illiterate PRC retirees. PRC/HK org crime saw how profitable, scaled up, ande more sophisticated (pig butcher + crypto to evade capital controls), targetted global Chinese diasphora. PRC cracks down domestically. They move to Myanmar / south eat asia, partner with local armed groups. Taiwanese call centers still around, but they're squeezed to other part of big butcher scacm chain, i.e. trafficking people. Anyway, every once in awhile their activities piss enough neighbours off especially PRC off that actual state power like junta has to intervenene.
Of course 90% of your previous comments are explicitly related to the PRC. Apologies for only reviewing 100 of them.
I use different accounts for different subjects, well I use siloed account for PRC geopolitics, precisely because people challenged on PRC literacy likes to dig through accounts and be wierd about it.
> people challenged on PRC literacy
I believe you have a much more literal term for that.
What's Grandma supposed to do with all those Google Play gift cards now?
Do NOT redeem!
idk maybe google is somewhat responsible here?
either their fraud-detection isn't working, or they're turning blind-eye here for profit?
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.
Gift cards are an idea whose time has passed. All they seem useful now is for scams and laundering money. All this plastic waste and fraud, so that a few legit customers can turn general-purpose money into company-specific money. Ridiculous product that should go away.
Absolutely agreed. But there’s a huge “legal” scam industry around it (essentially you are converting universal, fungible currency into scrip with an expiration date and strings attached), on top of which the illegal scam industry builds on (both sides benefit off each other).
Google has enough metadata to graph and deduce which are scams.
Seriously, when are people gonna stop giving these megacorporations the benefit of a doubt?
this
> From Google's perspective - someone bought a gift card in the US, and redeemed it somewhere else in the US
hmm really? is this coming from a google PR firm or what? if that's the google's "perspective", unfortunately that means google is really technically inept or morally corrupt enough to watch a lot of people, including Americans, go thru the torture and being incinerated.
if Google receives a lot of "I was scammed into this" from whoever bought the giftcard, doesn't google have the responsibility to ask the giftcard user where they got that redeem code from? At least warn them several times, and then cut those buyers too?
that's the worst justification of a big corp imaginable -- I mean, that alone justifies a congressional hearing, and could mount to a deluge of negative media press:
"how google has skin in the Cambodian scams"
> if Google receives a lot of "I was scammed into this" from whoever bought the giftcard
Google doesn't sell the cards directly - at least not the ones purchased at the supermarket and used for scamming. There's a scummy industry of middlemen that handles this - that's why every store can sell basically every gift card; they don't have their PoS interact with every single vendor's API, they delegate to a middleman. So Google gets very limited data at purchase time, and is not technically the merchant selling the goods in this case.
> doesn't google have the responsibility to ask the giftcard user where they got that redeem code from
What will that change in practice? They have 2 options: either accept any answer, and nothing changes, or decline some answers, meaning either legitimate usage gets disrupted or the sites laundering the cards will just tell you the "right" answers to say.
> At least warn them several times, and then cut those buyers too?
Most buyers are one-time users; it's a relatively niche market. Mostly teens/etc who don't have their own payment card or are willing to go through the whole hassle for a small discount. As per the above, cutting people off would likely hinder legitimate usage.
Ideally the whole "gift card" industry just goes away as there's no good reason to have it when we already have the ultimate form of "gift card" in the form of money... but until then, even if Google were to step out of the game someone else will step in (the company issuing the cards isn't directly involved, their gift card is just used as a negotiable instrument in lieu of cash during the scam transaction, so any company's will do).
> has skin in the Cambodian scams
Cambodia/etc is pig butchering/fake investment scams. Gift cards and redeeming is exclusively Indians targeting the US market (in the UK they have money mules to launder actual bank transfers, so no need for gift cards).
> Most buyers are one-time users
well, even if they are, if google got scam-report, then isn't google obliged to start some investigation? are you ok with "well that's too bad you're scammed"?
> Gift cards and redeeming is exclusively Indians targeting the US market (in the UK they have money mules to launder actual bank transfers, so no need for gift cards).
well nope it's a thing everywhere -- even in some east-asian country, there's a public advertisement targeting convenient-store workers: "don't give google redeem code even if the person claims to work for the cvs chain"
AND...
> Google doesn't sell the cards directly - at least not the ones purchased at the supermarket and used for scamming.
wow... ok so where does that "redeem card" come from? are you saying stores can generate those redeem codes? ...something doesn't seem right here...?
> Ideally the whole "gift card" industry just goes away as there's no good reason to have it when we already have the ultimate form of "gift card" in the form of money... but until then, even if Google were to step out of the game someone else will step in (the company issuing the cards isn't directly involved, their gift card is just used as a negotiable instrument in lieu of cash during the scam transaction, so any company's will do).
wtf is this... are we talking about some random mom&pop store-issued giftcards? is Google a mom&pop store? is the "google doing a giftcard biz" so valuable enough to license them turning blind-eye?
> Cambodia/etc is pig butchering/fake investment scams
cambodian operation is massive enough that it INCLUDES google-giftcard scheme.
idk, all this adds up to one thing: google needs to replace whatever PR firm it's using