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Scam Centers in Myanmar Rebuild, Expand Despite Crackdown

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AFP – Scam centers in Myanmar blamed for swindling billions from victims across the world are expanding fast just months after a crackdown that was supposed to eradicate them, an AFP investigation has found.

New buildings have been springing up inside the heavily guarded compounds around Myawaddy on the Thailand-Myanmar border at a dizzying pace, with others festooned with dishes for Elon Musk’s Starlink service, satellite images, and AFP drone footage show.

Starlink has gone from nowhere at the time of the crackdown in February to becoming Myanmar’s biggest internet provider every day from 3 July until 1 October, according to data from the APNIC Asian regional internet registry.

The US Congress Joint Economic Committee told AFP they have begun an investigation into Starlink’s involvement with the centers. It has the power to make Musk testify before it.

SpaceX, which owns Starlink, did not reply to AFP requests for comment.

China, Thailand, and Myanmar forced state-aligned armed groups who protect the centers into promising to “eradicate” the compounds in February. They freed around 7,000 people — most Chinese citizens — from the brutal call center-style system, which the United Nations says runs on forced labour and human trafficking.

Many workers told AFP they were beaten and forced to work long hours by scam bosses who target victims across the globe with telephone, internet, and social media accounts.

Starlink has topped the APNIC ranking of Myanmar internet providers for all but one week since 3 July, after first appearing at number 56 in the list in late April.

Only weeks after the headline-grabbing releases, building work on several of the centers had started along the Moei River, which forms the frontier with Thailand.

AFP analysis of satellite images from Planet Labs PBC found dozens of buildings going up or being altered in the largest of the compounds, KK Park, between March and September.

New roads and a roundabout had also been added, with the security checkpoint at its entrance greatly extended. AFP drone footage also captured major construction going on, with cranes and labourers hard at work on what appeared to be large office blocks.

At least five new ferry crossings across the Moei River have also appeared to supply the centers from the Thai side, satellite images show.

Construction work has also been going on at several of the other 27 suspected scam centers in the Myawaddy cluster, AFP analysis found, including what the US Treasury called the “notorious” Shwe Kokko centres, north of Myawaddy.

– ‘Abhorrent’ –

Last month, the US sanctioned nine people connected to Shwe Kokko and the Chinese criminal kingpin She Zhijiang, founder of the multistorey Yatai New City center there.

Senator Maggie Hassan, the leading Democrat on the US Congressional committee, has called on Musk to block the Starlink service to the fraud factories.

“While most people have probably noticed the increasing number of scam texts, calls, and emails, they may not know that transnational criminals halfway across the world may be perpetrating these scams by using Starlink internet access,” she said.

The senator wrote to Musk in July demanding answers to 11 questions about Starlink’s role.

Former California prosecutor Erin West, who now heads the Operation Shamrock group campaigning against the centers, said: “It is abhorrent that an American company is enabling this to happen.”

While still a cybercrime prosecutor, she warned Starlink in July 2024 that the mostly Chinese crime syndicates that run the centers were using its dishes, but received no reply.

Americans are among the top targets of Southeast Asia scammers, the US Treasury Department said, losing an estimated USD 10 billion last year, up 66 percent in 12 months.

Up to 120,000 people may be being “forced to carry out online scams” in the Myanmar centers, according to a UN report in 2023.

It said another 100,000 are likely being held in similar conditions in Cambodia.


© Agence France-Presse

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