[HN Gopher] Myanmar military shuts down a major cybercrime cente...
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Myanmar military shuts down a major cybercrime center, detains over
2k people
Author : bikenaga
Score : 141 points
Date : 2025-10-26 15:11 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (apnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (apnews.com)
| randycupertino wrote:
| 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...
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| "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 wrote:
| 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
| xandrius wrote:
| Yeah, I'd go for something like "despite what you have to
| do, you still matter".
| kuangtsao wrote:
| 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.
| ValentineC wrote:
| > _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.wik
| ipedia.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.
| kuangtsao wrote:
| 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.
| noobermin wrote:
| That's alright, when one falls, 3 others from China will be
| come in and restart the scheme anew.
| dougb5 wrote:
| I also recommend the Scam Factory podcast:
|
| https://open.spotify.com/show/2cfjCS28vx1MVoukNjpINt
| mouse_ wrote:
| What's Grandma supposed to do with all those Google Play gift
| cards now?
| Hackbraten wrote:
| Do NOT redeem!
| sysguest wrote:
| idk maybe google is somewhat responsible here?
|
| either their fraud-detection isn't working, or they're turning
| blind-eye here for profit?
| Nextgrid wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Google has enough metadata to graph and deduce which are
| scams.
| sysguest wrote:
| 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"
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > 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).
| sysguest wrote:
| > 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
| optimalsolver wrote:
| Seriously, when are people gonna stop giving these
| megacorporations the benefit of a doubt?
| ryandrake wrote:
| 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.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| 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, so the legal side has no interest in
| discontinuing operations or even measuring how much of
| their turnover is actually as a result of illegal
| dealings).
| gruturo wrote:
| I use Steam gift cards to load my own Steam wallet, to
| avoid having Visa/Mastercard in the loop since they
| started dictating which games can be published and which
| can't.
| lysace wrote:
| 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).
| programmertote wrote:
| 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.
| maxglute wrote:
| > 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.
| maxglute wrote:
| >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.
| lysace wrote:
| Of course 90% of your previous comments are explicitly
| related to the PRC. Apologies for only reviewing 100 of them.
| maxglute wrote:
| 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.
| lysace wrote:
| > people challenged on PRC literacy
|
| I believe you have a much more literal term for that.
| sbarre wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Maybe some governments are sponsoring these activities near the
| border of a political rival. Like they did during the golden
| triangle era...
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Article is from the 20th so you're probably hearing about the
| same specific action
| verdverm wrote:
| There were related articles on the kidnapping / hostage like
| experience of some expats a few months back iirc
| trallnag wrote:
| Probably the Belarusian woman who ended up kidnapped,
| murdered, and dismembered in Myanmar.
| cruelness523 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Source please on the Chinese and Korean claims.
| yorwba wrote:
| 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...
| nextworddev wrote:
| Wasn't that it was soft, it was actually actively assisting the
| ops
| m101 wrote:
| "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?
| crishoj wrote:
| 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.
| crishoj wrote:
| SpaceX acknowledged the use that has apparently moved to cut
| service for some scam camps:
| https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpd2e5541d1o
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| 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.
| xandrius wrote:
| This sounds like an absolutely great win for humans then. Go
| AI!
| melbourne_mat wrote:
| Shutdown because they either stopped paying their dues or didn't
| agree to the recent increase
| milkshakes wrote:
| they kidnapped the wrong person
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidnapping_of_Wang_Xing
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(page generated 2025-10-26 23:01 UTC)