Yesterday, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) released a report adding to the small but growing body of literature on the cancerous cyber scam operations that continue to spread across mainland Southeast Asia.
The UNODC report sheds light on the Regional wave of digital crime that has emerged in the Mekong region since the emergence of COVID-19. At that time, operators of existing illegal casino operations across the region advanced existing plans to begin conducting online scams, including various types of cryptocurrency frauds and romance investment scams.
Most of these industrial-scale operations are located in special economic zones, often administered by China, and in other regulatory voids in Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia. Some are also present in the Philippines and Malaysia. Aside from the billions these scams extract from victims around the world, many have also turned to “mass human trafficking for forced crime,” to use the UNODC technical term, which has been facilitated by the context of economic insecurity that accompanied the pandemic closures.
The testimonies of those who have escaped these complexes are invariably similar: job seekers are lured with promises of legitimate employment, only to have their passports confiscated. They are then housed in fortified “scam complexes” (usually hotels, casinos and apartment buildings, but also large purpose-built complexes) and forced to carry out various types of digital scams, often under threat of beatings, ill-treatment and torture.
The report details the hitherto unprecedented scale of these scam operations and their connections to transnational organized crime groups, often run by Chinese gangsters. The UNODC report cites estimates that there could be “at least 100,000 victims of trafficking for forced criminality” in one nation alone, Cambodia. “If accurate,” says the UNODC, “these estimates of trafficking for forced criminal purposes in Southeast Asia would suggest that this is one of the largest coordinated human trafficking operations in history.”
Similar figures were cited in a last month’s report from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, which stated that at least 120,000 people in Myanmar and at least 100,000 in Cambodia “may be held in situations where they are forced to carry out online scams.”
According to the UNODC, this increase in crime “has been driven by organized crime groups in the region, which operate in a remarkably open manner.” The report adds that the illicit activities of these groups “are linked to various legal and illegal entertainment establishments, such as casinos, hotels and registered companies (businesses), which operate from complex-type buildings where victims are housed and forced to commit, or be complicit in, cybercrimes.”
Given the scale, the profits of organized crime groups have reached unprecedented levels, and the report estimates that the fraud industry in a single (unnamed) Mekong nation “may be generating between $7.5 and $12.5 billion million” – around half of the country’s official GDP.
According to the UNODC, the main locations are those that have long hosted illegal activities. In Cambodia, most known operations have been concentrated in Sihanoukville, a port city on the country’s southern coast, and around its borders, particularly in Bavet on its border with Vietnam and Poipet, on its border with Thailand.
In Laos, they focus on the northwestern province of Bokeo, home of the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone, run by Chinese-born mafia magnate Zhao Wei, whom the US government has sanctioned for “drug trafficking.” , money laundering, bribery and human and wildlife trafficking.”
Perhaps the most extensive operations are now in Myanmar, which provides exceptionally fertile ground for criminality, given that it is “home to non-state armed groups that control important border areas and have a history of working with organized crime syndicates.”
Myanmar’s scam complexes are concentrated in two areas. The first is located in the southeast of Myanmar, near the city of Myawaddy, on the border with Thailand, where the notorious development of Shwe Kokko. The second is along the border between Shan State and China’s Yunnan Province – in particular, three “special regions” – Wa State, Kokang and Mong La – controlled by armed rebel groups with close ties to China. .
The report identifies a key distinction in Myanmar. While Cambodia-based operations typically convert existing buildings, such as casinos and hotels, for fraudulent operations, Myanmar-based syndicates are building “large purpose-built structures” whose sole purpose is to “provide the infrastructure for scam and fraud operations.” online on a large scale.” “
These compounds are “fortified to ensure that victims cannot escape,” including with metal bars on the windows and balconies of offices and bedrooms. Meanwhile, “at the entrance to the complex there are guards armed with guns, electric whips and handcuffs.”
UNODC emphasizes the transnational nature of the challenge and the ease with which operations can close and relocate jurisdictions. “Organized crime groups are converging in the region where they see vulnerabilities,” UNODC regional representative Jeremy Douglas said in a statement. statement that accompanied the publication of the report.
While some repressive measures have been carried out in Cambodia and the Philippines, Douglas said, these “have caused partial displacement and we have seen criminals moving infrastructure to places where they see opportunities, basically where they hope to be able to take advantage of them and not be held accountable, to areas remote and border areas of the Mekong.
In the attached statement cited above, UNODC reported that it and senior officials from China and member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) had completed a Strategic plan to respond to the “scam” in the region. The plan, which will be presented at the upcoming ASEAN Senior Officials Meeting on Transnational Crime, “includes measures to improve preventive responses, the identification and protection of victims, and the capabilities of law enforcement and criminal justice officials.” criminal justice to investigate and cooperate. “
A coordinated approach to tackling the problem has long been needed. The challenge, as considerable report body What this now corroborates is that cyber scam operations are often lubricated by the cooperation (or at least passive acquiescence) of prominent businessmen and government authorities – the very reason crackdowns have so far been so limited. and partial. Unless local governments develop both the capacity and the political will to support a regional fight, an end to the regional scourge of cyber scams will remain elusive.