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Crime

Thousands of Freed Scam Center Workers Now Trapped in Overcrowded Detention Centers (apnews.com) 73

Posted by EditorDavid from the nightmare-continues dept.
August, 2023: Thousands of Crypto Scammers are Enslaved by Human-Trafficking Gangsters, Says Bloomberg Reporter. ("They'd lure young people from across Southeast Asia...with the promise of well-paying jobs in customer service or online gambling.")

February, 2025: A coordinated response begins by Thai, Chinese and Myanmar authorities, which includes cutting power, internet, and fuel supplies to the scam centers.

Today: The Associated Press reports that thousands of the people liberated from locked compounds in Myanmar now "have found themselves trapped once again, this time in overcrowded facilities with no medical care, limited food and no idea when they'll be sent home." Thousands of sick, exhausted and terrified young men and women, from countries all over the world squat in rows, packed shoulder to shoulder, surgical masks covering their mouths and eyes. Their nightmare was supposed to be over... The armed groups who are holding the survivors, as well as Thai officials across the border, say they are awaiting action from the detainees' home governments. It's one of the largest potential rescues of forced laborers in modern history, but advocates say the first major effort to crack down on the cyber scam industry has turned into a growing humanitarian crisis...

An unconfirmed list provided by authorities in Myanmar says they're holding citizens from 29 countries including Philippines, Kenya and the Czech Republic. Authorities in Thailand say they cannot allow foreigners to cross the border from Myanmar unless they can be sent home immediately, leaving many to wait for help from embassies that has been long in coming. China sent a chartered flight Thursday to the tiny Mae Sot airport to pick up a group of its citizens, but few other governments have matched that. There are roughly 130 Ethiopians waiting in a Thai military base, stuck for want of a $600 plane ticket. Dozens of Indonesians were bused out one morning last week, pushing suitcases and carrying plastic bags with their meager possessions as they headed to Bangkok for a flight home... The recent abrupt halt to U.S. foreign aid funding has made it even harder to get help to released scam center workers...

It's not clear how much of an effect these releases will have on the criminal groups that run the scam centers. February marked the third time the Thais have cut internet or electricity to towns across the river. Each time, the compounds have managed to work around the cuts. Large compounds have access to diesel-powered generators, as well as access to internet provider Starlink, experts working with law enforcement say.
The article also points out that "The people released are just a small fraction of what could be 300,000 people working in similar scam operations across the region, according to an estimate from the United States Institute of Peace. Human rights groups and analysts add that the networks that run these illegal scams will continue to operate unless much broader action is taken against them..."

"The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes estimates that between $18 billion and $37 billion was lost in Asia alone in 2023, with minimal government action against the criminal industry's spread."

Thousands of Freed Scam Center Workers Now Trapped in Overcrowded Detention Centers More | Reply

Thousands of Freed Scam Center Workers Now Trapped in Overcrowded Detention Centers

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  • Crypto enabling crime (again) (Score:3)

    by Ritz_Just_Ritz ( 883997 ) on Monday March 10, 2025 @08:14AM (#65222833)

    Yet another story of criminals leveraging crypto to fleece their victims. And now with a twist....powering the fraud by trafficking people desperate for a job.

    • Re:Crypto enabling crime (again) (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Monday March 10, 2025 @08:56AM (#65222891)

      No surprise. People with a lack of education tend to wonder why banks, real money and real investments and also legal gambling are so strongly regulated. Crap like this (which has happened in the past in similar forms) is one of the reasons.

    • Don't forget to boycott Target over all those overseas gift card scams.

      iTunes too.

    • Yes, we've never seen anyone leveraging money to fleece people. We should outlaw money.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by shanen ( 462549 )

      Interesting FP, though I will say the story has been getting a lot of local coverage and I haven't heard any mention of crypto in those news reports. They have mostly focused on citizens (including high school students) recruited under false pretenses and then imprisoned in the scam factories. What they have said about the scams is that they mostly seem to be 419s or ore-ore scams. The videos make it appear that they are running these scams at the scale of small cities. Meanwhile the local police are focusi

  • to the trafficked people, but the world of today is like a jungle. Anybody who shows a weakness, stupidity, looks like a prey, or isn't at their personal best everytime can be eaten and digested. When you see a job offer too good to be true, it probably isn't true, this is but one among dozens of rules you need to keep in mind.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Indeed. A good first approximation is "if t looks to good to be true, it likely is." But many people lack the mind-set needed to understand that and many people lack the education for it. And some are just desperate and (mistakenly) think things cannot get any worse.

      With the Internet, the whole world has become a target-rich environment. Oh, and look, some already super-rich assholes push the scams and get even more rich on it.

  • Failure of the world (Score:3)

    by Retired Chemist ( 5039029 ) on Monday March 10, 2025 @09:35AM (#65222985)
    Most of these people could easily be sent home, if money was available. They are basically stuck for the lack of a plane ticket and an effective embassy from their home country. We have trillions of dollars to spend on weapons that we will probably never use and cannot come up with a few million to repatriate these victims.

    • Re: Failure of the world (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ahodgson ( 74077 ) on Monday March 10, 2025 @09:38AM (#65222993)

      I can't think of a single reason to steal money from American tax payers to fly Ethiopians home from Myanmar. The world is full of problems, can't pay for them all.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kackle ( 910159 )
        +1 Sad Reality. I'm sure anyone can donate his own money based on his personal financial situation.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        It is called "humanitarian action". I guess you are just not a humanitarian.

        Now, I am not saying this should be done. The same amount of money could do more good used in a different fashion or not being collected, but not being able to think of a single reason marks you as a hardcore evil person.

      • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

        by Virtucon ( 127420 )

        As recent history points out, our own bureaucracy of leftists do a better job of stealing from us than a few thousand people in southeast Asia.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kackle ( 910159 )

      We have trillions of dollars to spend on weapons that we will probably never use ...

      Humans: "Hold my beer."

    • Even while being detained, didn't the governments take over these scam facilities? Why not use some of them for holding? I bet there was at least some food for the workers there.

    • We're cutting off food aid to starving children - where the food is purchased from American farmers - while spending money on propaganda operations flying immigrants to Guantanamo Bay in C-17 cargo aircraft [wsj.com] that can carry multiple helicopters in them at extravagant expense for photos and video.

      You're barking up the wrong tree looking for any money from the US government to actually solve problems through foreign aid. They're far too busy spending tax dollars filming B-roll for right-wing agitprop networks.

  • Little hope for a fix (Score:3)

    by vbdasc ( 146051 ) on Monday March 10, 2025 @09:49AM (#65223001)

    Human rights groups and analysts add that the networks that run these illegal scams will continue to operate unless much broader action is taken against them...

    They will continue to operate because even if the governments of Myanmar and Thailand have the political will to solve the problem, rescuing these people would only create a hot potato for them, with nobody willing to pay for the sustenance, let alone repatriation, of the trafficked victims. It seems that China is willing to pay to free its citizens, but it's rather like the exception to the rule. It's no wonder too, because most of these countries are poor.

    • The government of Myanmar is fighting a war with just about the entire country. Don't think they are interested in helping.

    • even if the governments of Myanmar and Thailand have the political will to solve the problem, rescuing these people would only create a hot potato for them, with nobody willing to pay for the sustenance, let alone repatriation, of the trafficked victims.

      That's the real story here. These people's governments have abandoned them. What good are those governments? Apparently none at all.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by vbdasc ( 146051 )

        The third world reality. Most of the slashdotters are not from third world countries. We're a privileged bunch in this aspect. We expect that if we find ourselves in a situation like this, abroad, our governments will come to our help. In a normal third world country, possibly in a failed state situation, nobody gives a flying fvck about such things. And even if somebody gives a fvck, there are no resources to help.

        • The third world reality. Most of the slashdotters are not from third world countries. We're a privileged bunch in this aspect. We expect that if we find ourselves in a situation like this, abroad, our governments will come to our help. In a normal third world country, possibly in a failed state situation, nobody gives a flying fvck about such things. And even if somebody gives a fvck, there are no resources to help.

          Funnily enough, I actually know a British guy who lived in Yangon and got arrested during the protests a few years back. He called the consulate on a Friday night and was told to call back on Monday. Apparently the "get your citizens out of trouble" service is only offered during business hours.

      • Gee, it's hard to imagine a country that's fighting a war with its own citizens. /s https://www.military.com/daily-news/2025/03/05/va-plans-fire-83000-employees-musks-help-eliminating-pact-act-staffing-increase.html [military.com]

        • This is what I can't square in my own mind:

          What do you think happens when you piss off enough people that have been trained for war, have an above-the-mean incidence rate of mental health issues, and likely have easy access to firearms?

          A valid definition of stupidity: taking action without asking "what happens after that". It's very clear that nobody in Musky's cohort is asking that question, even once. Shit on veterans at your own peril.

  • This has been getting worse since CoViD. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Qbertino ( 265505 ) <moiraNO@SPAMmodparlor.com> on Monday March 10, 2025 @10:23AM (#65223063)

    They lull unsuspecting young people from around asia to some backwater area with promise of a fair paying job to help them and their families, then capture them and take them away to some labor-prison built somewhere on nomansland on the southern chinese border. This is hardcore prison slave-labor and those who manage to escape tell that they either where forced to build Temu-trash for basically no income or forced to scam people which they don't want to do.

    The truth is, today we have slaves just as we had 1000 years ago, only more of them because the overall population has grown. The stories I run into about this has me twitching to leave my dayjob, arm myself, find some likeminded people and start violently liberating these people and putting some bullets into the heads of those responsible.

    Our cushy life is but one sliver of niceness in a history (and present) of gruesome existence.

    Think twice before you buy Temu-junk. If it's too cheap to be true, someone had to pay a _very_ hard price and that likely wasn't some teenager happy to support his family in some doorstep country, these days it's increasingly likely that that someone was a bona-fide enslaved worker.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Indeed. I happen to think that enslaving somebody is among the most evil acts that can be committed.

  • Civilization? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by bradley13 ( 1118935 ) on Monday March 10, 2025 @10:31AM (#65223087) Homepage

    Large parts of the world are fundamentally uncivilized. Barbaric cultures, where slavery, rape and murder are normal things. Look at the current slaughter happening in Syria. Much of Africa, much of the Middle East, and some parts of Asia are - by Western standards - barbaric.

    The West has thrown literally trillions of dollars of aid into these regions, with little measurable benefit. In the past couple of decades, the West has accepted millions of migrants from these areas. Well meant only: many of those migrants fail to integrate into Western culture, resulting in massive problems with crime and violence, from the UK grooming gangs to the recent acts of terrorism in Germany.

    What's the answer? Is there one? Direct aid doesn't work - it mostly just provides money for corruption and weapons. Allowing mass migration endangers our own societies. Maybe the best thing we could do is step back and wait until they decide they want to become civilized.

  • While I think it's tragic in regards to the slapadash chaos that is the Trump administration's approach to destroying everything that they do not like, I think it's petty and unfair of the article to say "The recent abrupt halt to U.S. foreign aid funding..."
    The article describes an issue on the opposite side of the world, and mentions no US citizen involvement, but yet somehow finds the nerve to point at a lack of US funding as contributing to the issue with getting these people home? Keep your pet agenda

    • You don't have to believe it (I am not sure I do, would prefer a name on that source) but it does mention:

      The United Nations’ International Organization for Migration, for example, previously funded care for victims of trafficking in scam compounds in one shelter in Cambodia, but was forced to halt that work by the Trump Administration’s funding freeze announced in January, according to a source with direct knowledge of the situation. The halt to funding has also impacted a network of civil soci

      • I understand your point. My resistance is more to the topic of why is it a US foreign aid issue to fund relocating Asians in Asia?
        I feel bad for these people who have been victimized. But lets see the outrage pointed at the countries not responding to the return of their citizens rather than paint a picture of how this is somehow the USs fault. Why is their help somehow dependent on US aide from a country that already has vastly too much debt? Where is the rest of the world's assistance on this? Shoul

        • Shouldn't that program properly be funded by most countries and the US is just one cup of water in that 5 gallon bucket?

          I would say it's because America has far more water available to add to that bucket (we are the wealthiest nation, by a long shot, just look at GDP-per-capita versus those nations, Myanmar in particular is like 10x less)

          Now you don't have to agree, I can see you don't, with US doing humanitarian aid but that's really just what the answer is, the US as the global hegemon tends to put it's wealth into efforts like this. Partly because we find it moral to do so when we have the means (we do, I would say) and

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mysidia ( 191772 )

          Shouldn't that program properly be funded by most countries and the US is just one cup of water

          Yes. Actually; I'd say this ought to be funded primarily by the country that was hosting scam centers. Whether willing or not: they sponsored criminal enterprise by having it in their country. Detaining kidnapping victims also should not be allowed: the country they are located in should have only two options - Pay to have them transported to a home country, Or release them.

  • I'm guessing they've seized funds from the scammers. Why not use those funds to arrange to get the victims repatriated?

    • Better yet, divvy up whatever funds they seized and give them to the victims. Although, if you count the people being scammed, it's probably a lot of victims.

  • Can't turn them off, really? (Score:3)

    by mysidia ( 191772 ) on Monday March 10, 2025 @01:52PM (#65223599)

    Each time, the compounds have managed to work around the cuts. Large compounds have access to diesel-powered generators, as well as access to internet provider Starlink, experts working with law enforcement say.

    Ok then, but c'mon. You are government and law enforcement, right? Step it up. All of these methods should be easy to anticipate. You have control of the power utility, and there are plenty of ways to disable computer equipment more persistently. They are very sensitive to something like a strong EMP being sent down the wire by law enforcement and very difficult to protect against such things.

    Then also go to Starlink and get all service to the location in question terminated. If you want a more definitive approach, then dispatch your law enforcement helicopters equip with 50 BMG rifles over the scam facilities' compounds with spotters looking for all outside dishes that have a view of the sky and put holes in them.

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