Thousands of Freed Scam Center Workers Now Trapped in Overcrowded Detention Centers (apnews.com) 45
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."
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."
Crypto enabling crime (again) (Score:2)
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:4, Insightful)
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.
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Don't forget to boycott Target over all those overseas gift card scams.
iTunes too.
Re: Crypto enabling crime (again) (Score:1)
Yes, we've never seen anyone leveraging money to fleece people. We should outlaw money.
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Re:I have an idea (Score:5, Insightful)
You are embarrassing.
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Re: I have an idea (Score:1)
Only if the only thing you remember from history is Nazism
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Do you somehow have a mental disability? What you claim makes zero sense.
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Indeed, it is. Looks to me like some people are deep in denial about what the NSDAP and its members stood for.
Related to Musk just recently crapping publicly on all the people murdered by the Nazis?
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
If it acts like a Nazi, then it should be treated like a Nazi.
Whether or not it is a dyed-in-the-wool, Swastika-bearing, Roman-saluting Nazi is beside the point. What matters is its view on ethnic cleansing.
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and making ignorant people think the actual Nazis must not have been so bad.
No, you've got me confused with Felon Husk.
Come at me bro (Score:2)
I'm never going to stop mocking Leon. NEVER. If they send me to an oven my last words will be ELON IS A BITCH
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Nazis executed plenty of people because of their vocation too.
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Read up on history. Just murdering people that are not members of the Herrenrasse and have outlived their usefulness is _also_ a very Nazi thing to do. You claim is simplistic, ignorant and wrong.
Yes, some people like to overuse the term "Nazi". For the case at hand, it is accurate.
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If someone talking with you said "I believe in Hitler and National Socialism" would you clock them as a "Nazi"?
Without doing the strain on credulity where we analyze every aspect of that idea, would that statement not at least give you a moment of pause about their belief system?
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I think their ethnicity is all True Scotsman, unless you say there's no such thing.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Nope. You are unaware of history. The proposed course of action I criticize is one that would have made perfect sense to the 3rd Reich Nazis.
There is no problem in my side here. There is a massive problem on your side as you are currently trying to normalize calls for mass-murder. You are scum.
My sympathies (Score:2)
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.
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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:2)
Re: Failure of the world (Score:3)
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.
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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.
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We spend a lot on weapons and they then get sent overseas for us or our allies to use.
Those were mostly a bunch of old-ass weapons we had sitting in piles for years and years. That shit doesn't keep forever.
Our inventory is actually pretty depleted because of our allies' demand.
Link to our current inventory?
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mostly a bunch of old-ass weapons we had sitting in piles
Yeah, it's kind of better than just going to war to use up our weapons. They need to be refreshed at some point regardless.
I'm sure part of it is that we keep signing contracts with defense contractors to build even more, so we have to do something with everything we already have. So some small part of that is waste.
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We spend a lot on weapons and they then get sent overseas for us or our allies to use
Where are those weapons manufactured and when the US spends on weapons that are produced domestically who is actually getting the check cut to them?
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We have trillions of dollars to spend on weapons that we will probably never use ...
Humans: "Hold my beer."
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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.
Little hope for a fix (Score:3)
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.
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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.
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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.
This has been getting worse since CoViD. (Score:3)
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.
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Indeed. I happen to think that enslaving somebody is among the most evil acts that can be committed.
Civilization? (Score:2)
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 m
U.S. foreign aid funding!?!?!?!?!!!!?!???!?!?! (Score:2)
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