Scamland
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“I hope this conversation will give fruitful insights of what is going on in scam centers and what the situation is inside them,” says Lin Jin Fu, a Myanmar researcher whose work exposes the intersection between human trafficking and organized crime. Specializing in illicit economies across Southeast Asia, Lin Jin Fu studies how online scam compounds have evolved from small Chinese operations into a multi-billion-dollar industry spanning Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, and beyond. His latest study, Scam haven: Responding to surging cyber crime and human trafficking in Myanmar, commissioned by Knowledge for Democracy Myanmar, investigates the mechanics and human toll of this phenomenon, situating it within the country’s political collapse and globalized criminal networks.
Lin Jin Fu explains that the origins of the current system lie in China’s history. The term for scam houses, jiāpian (literally “scam house”) once described a form of organized labor within criminal groups. In the mid-twentieth century, the practice proliferated in China’s underground economies, but as Beijing intensified restrictions and surveillance, the operators began seeking new spaces where regulation was weaker. “They found countries like Myanmar and Cambodia, where the rule of law and governance are failing,” he says. They embedded themselves in lawless frontier zones—the Golden Triangle, northern Shan State, the Cambodia-Thailand border—creating self-contained compounds that combined physical captivity with digital exploitation. Regardless of their Chinese origins, Lin Jin Fu stresses that they are actually now multinational in character. Australians, Thais, and Westerners have all been arrested as participants. The model, once regional, has become transnational.
In practice, the scam centers form hubs around which secondary economies flourish: local logistics, black-market banking, narcotics, and prostitution. What began as digital fraud has merged with every kind of illicit commerce, drawing on and reinforcing existing criminal infrastructures. Economically, the scale is staggering. Lin Jin Fu estimates that scam centers collectively generate at least thirty-seven billion dollars annually, though the real figure may be far higher because of side businesses like drugs, gambling and trafficking. Exact accounting is impossible; official figures derive from reported victim losses, primarily in Western countries, but untold numbers of Asian victims remain uncounted.
China’s reaction unfolds on two fronts. The first consist of overt action. In October 2023, in Myanmar, the Three Brotherhood Alliance, a coalition of three ethnic armed organizations, launched an offensive against the military known as Operation 1027. It had apparent Chinese backing, and included action against major scam compounds in and around Laukkai, in northern Shan State. “They tracked down and demolished [it], bringing back Chinese citizens and the four clan leaders of Laukkai who are now on death row,” Lin Jin Fu relates.
The second front is informational. Beijing’s authorities have built a vast, domestic awareness campaign through social media, saturating WeChat and Weibo with anti-scam messaging. “Every day they have three, four, five, six articles about scam awareness,” he notes. These efforts, largely invisible outside China, show a rare degree of state mobilization against fraud, combining policing, propaganda, and digital monitoring.
The success of the Operation 1027 offensive — carried out by the Three Brotherhood Alliance with what appeared to be Beijing’s tacit approval — initially frightened scam operators across Myanmar. In the aftermath, several scam compounds suspended activities or evacuated staff, particularly in eastern Shan and Karen states, as groups feared being the next targets. But according to Lin Jin Fu, the effect was short-lived. Many smaller centers soon resumed operations, with local authorities or militias allowing them to continue as long as they avoided scamming Chinese nationals — a precaution to prevent angering Beijing. Westerners, however, remained fair targets. Inside Myanmar, Lin Jin Fu explains, the scam ecosystem largely persists, with every compound requiring the protection of an armed group, militia, or local power broker.
The criminal enterprises running the centers need a host who can protect them while also providing large acres of land. Most often, that host is an armed group controlling the territory. Most major compounds lie within zones dominated by the junta or its Border Guard Forces, semi-autonomous militias aligned with the military. These forces provide land, permits, and external security in exchange for bribes or taxes. Some ethnic forces, such as the SSPP in parts of Shan State, quietly tolerate the centers, while others, like the Three Brotherhood Alliance, have attacked and dismantled them. For revolutionary militias like the PDFs, ideological discipline still restrains collaboration, but Lin Jin Fu wonders how long poverty will preserve that line.
When Operation 1027 ended, the criminal networks supporting the centers adapted quickly. Their leaders paid immense sums— sometimes six hundred thousand yuan, roughly eighty-four thousand dollars— to escape by helicopter from Laukkai to Tachileik or Myawaddy. Low-level employees were arrested; the masterminds re-established operations elsewhere. “They are big, resilient networks,” Lin Jin Fu warns. Their transnational mobility allows them to survive any localized crackdown. When pressure mounts in one country, they migrate to another, moving “like water” between the Philippines, Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar. Smaller scams require little more than a few computers, internet access, and a generator, enabling operations to appear even in the rural hinterlands of central Myanmar. At the other extreme, mega-compounds such as KK Park or Shwe Kokko function as fortress cities with their own electricity grids and armed guards, beyond any state’s reach.
Within this environment, the scams themselves have diversified. There is the classic “pig-butchering” con in which bait is tossed into the online ecosystem; when someone shows interest, an online relationships is cultivated, until the time is right to entice the victim to invest in fake cryptocurrency portfolios. This scattershot approach has evolved into a more selective and professional enterprise. “They don’t randomly target people anymore. They target specific communities, and they use AI,” Lin Jin Fu says. Scammers now infiltrate Facebook or WhatsApp groups devoted to specialized topics, posing as legitimate participants and using AI-generated responses to sustain conversations. Once trust is built, they steer targets toward fraudulent investment platforms.
Parallel to this, online-gambling scams have proliferated, especially in Cambodia and Laos. These operations mimic legitimate casinos, using chatbots and human “customer service” staff to lure players from South America and elsewhere. Ninety percent of players lose, but the turnover is immense. Whole departments manage graphic design, marketing, and payment systems. “It seems small money,” Lin Jin Fu notes, “but if you have so many players, it gives you a lot of profit.” In Tachileik, in Myanmar, he estimates that sixty percent of scam workers are engaged in online-gambling platforms, some linked to Burmese celebrities who promote their own fraudulent sites. A third branch involves work-from-home and service scams, where unemployed IT workers create or maintain these systems remotely, often unaware of their criminality. The evolution reflects both technological innovation and economic desperation.
Besides greed and coercion, desperation is fuel that keeps the centers humming. After the 2021 coup and the military’s reintroduction of conscription, young people faced impossible choices. Legal migration became nearly impossible; passports were restricted, and neighboring countries tightened entry for undocumented workers. “The third choice is only the scam centers,” Lin Jin Fu explains. For many, joining offers protection, a salary, and a way to send money home. Chinese-speaking minorities from Shan State, especially those with contacts across the border, are in demand. Treatment varies by language skills and connections. “If you have a good boss, you get good living conditions. If you go wrong, if you don’t speak Chinese, you will suffer,” he says.
The scam centers themselves are run like armed camps. Within the compound walls, private security companies and internal “punishers” enforce discipline. Life inside the compounds blends corporate procedure with threats. Recruits sign one-year contracts; the first two months are unpaid training in psychological manipulation and communication scripts. Salaries depend on meeting quotas. Those who perform well may receive promotions and permission to leave after their term; others are held because traffickers must recover recruitment costs. While not all scam centers are run coercively, Lin Jin Fu says, many are brutal. Torture rooms, sexual violence, and forced abortions are common. Women face multiple forms of exploitation. Workers recognize the immorality of their trade, yet see no alternative in an economy shattered by war and inflation.
Around the compounds, money distorts everything. Food stalls, landlords, and transporters profit from the influx of residents. New buildings and cars appear even in remote border towns. “You can see development even on satellite maps,” Lin Jin Fu says. Yet this prosperity is an illusion. Prices inside scam zones are often hyperinflated: what costs ten kyat elsewhere sells for three hundred inside and around a compound. When a compound collapses is forced to shut down, the inflation remains but demand disappears, leaving “ghost towns” of shuttered shops and empty towers. “It’s a time bomb! When the scam falls, the region becomes like a desert again,” he says. The short-term boom enriches a few but destabilizes local economies and concentrates wealth in the hands of militia leaders and criminal investors.
For Myanmar’s national economy, the implications are corrosive. Scam revenues entrench armed-group autonomy and undermine legitimate enterprise. Yet for impoverished civilians, the centers offer one of the few reliable income sources. Lin Jin Fu cautions that moral condemnation alone will not solve the problem; without other alternatives, people will turn to crime. That’s why, he stresses, the structural causes— military rule, impunity, and lack of opportunity— must be addressed first, and of all these, the junta’s collapse is most essential. “Even if we try [to shut down operations], the scams will come back again until we demolish the system that lets these criminals run free.”
Moreover, because the criminal networks cross borders, solutions must as well. Lin Jin Fu argues that neighboring states should expand legal migration pathways for Myanmar’s youth. The issue is regional and global: the victims of recruitment are Burmese, but the victims of fraud are from around the world. Countries that ignore it will soon be targeted themselves. Yet many governments have conflicting incentives. Cambodia’s economy, Lin Jin Fu notes, depends heavily on the very scam operations it hosts. “It’s like Whac-a-Mole. It will always come up,” he says. Without coordinated regulation, every crackdown simply displaces the problem.
Still, Lin Jin Fu believes partial remedies exist. International actors could support groups that resist scam operations, such as the Karen National Union, and pressure visible compounds like Shwe Kokko and KK Park, whose existence is documented by satellite imagery. Equally vital is creating legitimate work for the thousands of skilled young people now trapped in cybercrime. Many scam workers have IT and marketing experience that could be redirected into regional development or technology firms. The challenge, Lin Jin Fu says, mirrors the drug-trade dilemma. “For drugs, people had an alternative— grow coffee instead of poppy. For scams, what is the alternative? That’s what nobody talks about.” Providing that alternative is the only sustainable way to dismantle the industry.
After years of documenting the suffering inside the compounds, Lin Jin Fu ends with a personal warning. Trafficking, he says, can strike anyone. “Your closest people could be trafficked anytime!” he cautions. Even activists and NGO workers have seen their relatives vanish after being lured by fake job offers. Vigilance and information-sharing remain the first defense. “Be careful, give warnings to everyone around you, especially your loved ones. Sometimes it’s so difficult to get them back. You might never retrieve them again.” His closing words encapsulate both fear and determination: a reminder that Myanmar’s scam crisis is not only a symptom of national collapse but a mirror of global neglect, reflecting what happens when economic despair meets digital reach and the world looks away.