Editor’s note: “I am Wang Xing, a Chinese citizen. At this moment, I have returned to the embrace of the motherland.” January 11, chinese actor Wang Xing, who was caught in a“Crew recruitment scam” in Myawaddy in eastern Myanmar, posted a message to netizens concerned about him after he landed in China. With the strengthening of international cooperation in combating electronic fraud and anti-fraud propaganda, especially after the severe crackdown on electronic fraud in northern Myanmar, some fraudsters have moved to Myawaddy, where their“Business” has been greatly reduced. Nowadays, fraudsters keep up with social hotspots and cater to personal preferences, tailoring fraud scripts for people of all ages, professional backgrounds and educational levels. Recently, a reporter from the Global Times contacted the families of survivors of wire fraud in Myawaddy and those who are still missing in Myanmar, and spoke with scholars who have long studied the issue of wire fraud in Myanmar, investigate the complex human trafficking and fraud networks behind the scams, as well as the evolving deception methods.
Thai police escort Chinese actor Wang Xing at the airport on Jan. 7. (visual China)
“If it looks professional, I’ll believe it.”
“I don’t want to go through it again. But until now, I still dream about fragments occasionally,” he said, recalling being tricked into a park in Myawaddy, zhang, the survivor and a doctor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told the global times.
In 2022, because his family and girlfriend fell seriously ill, Mr. Zhang quit his job as a researcher with an average monthly salary of 5,000 yuan in China and found an“Intermediary company” online to raise money for the operation, the company offered him a job claiming to be a translator in Singapore, and he was lured to Myawaddy as a“Piglet”. Mr. Zhang spent a nightmarish year there, forced to work 18-hour days pretending to be Asian women and coning men in North through internet chats. From his experience, we can also see the layers of cross-border crime of electronic fraud“Routine.”.
The park to which he was duped is just across the Moei River River from Thailand and far from northern Myanmar. In the process of defrauding Mr. Zhang, the so-called“Intermediary company” also emphasized that the place of work was Singapore and the temporary place of work was the Thailand branch office, and avoided talking about“Myanmar” the whole time, greatly lowered the alertness of being deceived. In addition, in the process of fraud, “Intermediary companies” will be the whole drama“Enough”. Mr Zhang told the global times: “At that time, they asked for a graduation certificate, a Certificate of English proficiency, a resume, a medical report from a top three hospital, no criminal record, etc. . They also sent me a job offer and even bought me a ticket to go abroad. It looks professional, so I believe it.”
In fact, was deceived to Myawaddy people at the beginning are want to escape, but after trying to find out, want to escape as hard as hell, also at great risk. “Two men held me down on the ground, then beat me on the buttocks and thighs with a round stick 10 centimeters in diameter, until my lower body turned black, completely swollen, and I was so dazed that I couldn’t stand still,” said Mr. Zhang, recalling his beatings and imprisonment at the park. Mr. Zhang is said to have been held in a welded steel cage with more than a dozen people, some for trying to escape, others for leaking secrets and still others for laziness. They were handcuffed to Poles and made to stand for more than 10 hours a day.
“After the media reported it, they were very polite,” said Mr. Zhang, who said that before his deception went viral on domestic social media, people at the park gave him only one meal a day, the news about him by the park“Leadership” after attention, out of worry and fear, they every day on time to Mr. Zhang Meal, finally decided to put him back home. In 2023 September, he was rescued and returned to China. After returning to China, Mr. Zhang shared his experience online to warn others to avoid falling into similar traps.
Hope to rescue with all kinds of information and strength
Mr Zhang is one of many victims who have been lured to Myanmar. Since the beginning of the 2023 in September, the Ministry of Public Security has deployed Border Police law enforcement cooperation and carried out a series of actions in response to telecommunications and internet fraud in northern Myanmar, as of November, more than 53,000 Chinese fraud suspects had been 2024, and large-scale electronic fraud parks in northern Myanmar, near our border, had been eradicated. But there are still small parks in northern Dangyang, Wan Hai Lines and Myawaddy, where many Chinese are trapped.
Soon after Wang was rescued, the families of 174 trapped people in Myanmar filled in information about the trapped people in an online document in a mutual support group for the families of trapped people in Myanmar. The document was then shared on social media platforms, have attracted wide attention. At present, the total number of people involved in the document information statistics has exceeded 1500, and is still rising.
According to the documents, most of the missing were men between the ages of 17 and 35, with a small number of women. Their absence ranged from a few months to three years. They are suspected of being abducted by two main routes: one is from Yunnan was taken into the northern region of Myanmar, the other is to Thailand was taken to the eastern Myawaddy and other areas.
Global Times reporter saw thousands of messages pouring in every day from the group of nearly 500 members, including mothers, brothers, wives and Sons, they are afraid to miss a message or a phone call, day and night looking forward to the return of their loved ones, in the difficult wait for each other to support and encourage each other.
Mr. Bai, the family member, told reporters that his son disappeared at the China-myanmar border last August after entering Myanmar from Yunnan province to take part in an“Investigation project recommended by a friend.”. Two weeks later, he secretly sent a distress call back that showed he was trapped in the Shan State bay“Sanzheng group” in eastern Burma. According to the information he sent back, he worked about 17 hours a day at the park and was required to complete 100,000 yuan a month in sales, failing which he was subjected to physical punishment and beatings. He is said to have had several fingers broken, leaving only a few for typing.
Mr. Bai’s son said that all his personal belongings had been burned or confiscated, that the camera of his work phone had been removed, and that the use of high-tech means in the park had led to inaccurate positioning of the phone, his latest location was probably in Mong Neng in northern Myanmar, but it is impossible to verify its accuracy. The victim is not allowed to ask about the park operations and management of the information, and even be encouraged to take drugs.
According to Mr. Bai’s son, he was transferred in different vehicles after entering the country and asked to take pictures and videos with other victims to confess to“Entering Myanmar voluntarily.”. The“Snakehead” then posted the photos to a group of park owners, and the victims were selected and assigned to different campuses. When the park heard about the crackdown last October, it moved people overnight to Mengneng, where they were handcuffed and stuffed into trucks. Mr. Bai said: “Electronic fraud gangs in the fight against non-stop ‘guerrilla warfare’ .”
There is an advertisement circulating on the internet that Miaowadi“Brilliant group” park is recruiting“Employees” for“Snakeheads.” It reads: “Average person 100,000 yuan, type fast 120,000 yuan, 20-30 years old.”
“The owners of these parks have paid for the smuggling and trafficking of ‘snakeheads, ‘ which means you already owe the owners more than 100,000 yuan once you enter the park,” Mr. Bai told reporters, some victims of the family spent more than 30 million yuan to redeem their loved ones, but Mr. Bai did not have enough money. As the park increased the difficulty of deception personnel, Ransom has gradually risen to 400,000 to 50 million yuan. In order to collect the ransom as soon as possible, Mr. Bai worked two jobs at the same time. In his spare time, he also studied the routines, geographical distribution and major“Traders” of the Myanmar Electronic Fraud Park, hope to use all kinds of information and strength to save his son as soon as possible.
Ms. Dai’s family first received an interview request from a reporter from the global times, showing a wary attitude. She didn’t let down her guard until the reporter sent her ID. She said many family members had encountered“Cheaters” in the process of tracing relatives, and some family members were tricked out of Zero Yuan in a desperate attempt to save people’s lives and suffered a double whammy.
On Sept. 25 last year, Ms. Dai received a message from her brother asking for a loan of 5,000 yuan. After transferring the money, she asked her brother if he would come home for National Day, he said he would stay in Hangzhou to work, which became his brother’s last contact with his family before he disappeared. His brother travelled from Hangzhou to Xishuangbanna on September 30 and disappeared. His mobile phone signal was last seen in WA State.
According to Ms. Dai, her brother has always had a“Dream of Internet fame” and is enthusiastic about the live-streaming industry. Brother to reward a female anchor had borrowed a net loan, the anchor’s account has been canceled. Ms Dai suspects that her younger brother may have been tricked into this“Online loan”.
New features in crime location and methods
Telecom and internet fraud has become the most 2023 type of crime, with 80 percent of phone fraud dens outside China, according to a blue book on the rule of law released by the Institute of Law of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
Bao Zhipeng, an assistant researcher at the asia-pacific Institute of the China Institute of International Studies, has long been concerned about electronic fraud in Myanmar. He said in an interview with the global times that since 2023 China has launched a series of joint law enforcement operations with Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia and other countries to crack down on Telecom and online fraud, remarkable results have been achieved. The trend of high incidence of electronic fraud has been reversed, and the number of criminal cases has dropped significantly. But now, the Kokang, Wa State and Mong La Township fraud groups in northern Burma are moving inland, to the Thai-burmese border and even to the Middle East. Myawaddy some park is still expanding the scale, some wire fraud group to Thailand, Cambodia and other countries back to the remote areas.
Some people believe that Myawaddy may evolve into a“Second North Myanmar.”. First of all, compared with northern Myanmar, Myawaddy has a more developed transportation network, a stronger military, and a larger and better-managed crime Yunnan University of Finance and Economics, said Jian kun-yi, a journalist with the school of Law and politics at the University of Finance and Economics. Second, the armed forces in Myawaddy have a complex international background, with many criminal organizations in Southeast Asia colluding with multi-national criminal groups. This is a new crime trend rarely seen in northern Myanmar. Finally, Myawaddy is far from our borders and is geographically and culturally more isolated than northern Myanmar. All this makes it more difficult to fight crime and rescue victims.
In addition to the relocation of crime sites, Bao Zhipeng believes that the criminal methods and targets of the electronic fraud group have shown new characteristics: first, the means of crime are increasingly hidden. The electronic fraud group constantly renovates the crime script, from the way of“Casting a wide net” in the past to the custom-made tactics for specific groups of people, from the past to the implementation of large-amount crimes to the implementation of small and medium-amount crimes. Some criminal groups even use“Starlink” devices when the country concerned disconnects the internet. Second, the increasing internationalization of criminal targets. In recent years, telecommunication crime in Southeast Asia has shown a trend of“Kalanchoe pinnata”. E-fraud groups began to target citizens of other countries, using artificial intelligence and other technologies to find targets on social platforms commonly used by overseas people, such as Facebook, X platform, and LINE. In addition to Chinese nationals, there have been cases of Russian, Mongolia, Japanese, Korean, Indian and other nationals being lured to Myawaddy and other regions to engage in wire fraud.
According to Bao Zhipeng, the crime of electronic fraud usually has a well-established“Industrial chain”, including“Water rooms” for money laundering, “Drivers” for transporting cash, and“Dog tweets” responsible for promoting online gambling, coupled with the provision of bank cards, telephone cards and other criminal materials to help credit crime members, the scale of criminal gangs is very large. Although a large number of fraud-involved people have been repatriated in recent years, many of them are members of the crime of aiding and abetting trust. Many of the leading figures in the electronic fraud ring are still protected by local protection networks and can“Run away” with information before law enforcement actions, so far, he’s gone free.
Jian Kunyi told reporters that anti-fraud propaganda should pay attention to“Quality” as well as“Quantity”, and constantly adjust the content of propaganda to cope with the changing trend of crime. On the one hand, it is necessary to strengthen the research on foreign-related rule of law in South Asia and Southeast Asia and the innovation of international cooperation governance; on the other hand, it is necessary to pay attention to the intelligence of law enforcement technology. Cybercrime depends on network governance, and it is necessary to use artificial intelligence and other technologies to monitor and analyze the information related to electronic fraud before criminal organizations.