Organized fraud using ‘modern-day slavery’ in Southeast Asia, including Myanmar and Cambodia
The amount stolen this year is 3.7 trillion won… Damage size tripled compared to 3 years ago
Online fraud gang members arrested in Myanmar
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(Seoul = Yonhap News) Reporter Lee Do-yeon = In October 2021, CY, a 54-year-old man living in San Francisco, California, received a message on WhatsApp from a beautiful Chinese woman.
This woman, who introduced herself as ‘Jessica’, pretended to be friendly with CY, saying she had met her before. CY had no memory of meeting this woman, but they gradually became friends as they continued chatting.
Jessica shared photos of herself living a luxurious life in New York, and CY confessed to her that caring for her father was difficult.
A few weeks later, Jessica encouraged CY to invest in cryptocurrency to pay for her father’s illness. After investing, the initial returns were amazing and CY thought he was making hundreds of thousands of dollars from cryptocurrency.
One day while continuing to invest, CY’s cryptocurrency account was locked and over a million dollars evaporated.
CY was caught up in a financial fraud committed by a Chinese criminal organization using human trafficking.
On the 27th (local time), CNN reported on the fraud situation of a Chinese criminal organization that operates modern slavery in Southeast Asian countries such as Myanmar and steals money from people around the world, including the United States.
According to the United Nations and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), these criminal organizations have built a multi-billion dollar criminal industry by exploiting the unstable situation in Southeast Asia, including technological advancements and civil war.
Gang members approach victims posing as young women, befriend them for several weeks, and then persuade them to invest in a fake cryptocurrency platform.
At first, they show high returns and encourage people to keep investing money, but eventually the investment money disappears along with the scammer.
Because the process of deceiving the victim is similar to slowly fattening a pig before slaughter, this criminal method is also called ‘pig slaughter fraud.’
According to the FBI, the scale of this fraud crime, which was $907 million (about 1.1 trillion won) in 2020, tripled to $2.9 billion (about 3.7 trillion won) by November of this year.
James Bernacle, director of the FBI’s Money Laundering Task Force, said, “This is a professionalization of fraudulent services,” and pointed out that more Americans and people around the world are falling for it.
The scammers who deceived the victims were not young women, but modern-day slaves who were trafficked and imprisoned in detention centers.
To carry out organized crime, Chinese criminal groups built huge buildings in eastern Myanmar and trapped thousands of people there with the promise of ‘jobs.’ The criminal group then pressured them into stealing millions of dollars in cryptocurrency, CNN reported.
The United Nations estimates that 120,000 people are trapped throughout Myanmar and 100,000 people in Cambodia and other regions are being forced to commit fraud.
Rakesh (pseudonym, 33) from India was also one of the victims. A chemical engineer, he came to Bangkok, Thailand in December last year after hearing that an IT company was offering him an office job.
However, the driver who picked him up from the airport took him to Mae Sot City, on the border between Thailand and Myanmar, instead of his office in Bangkok.
He was taken to a building in Myanmar with a 3m fence and a guard tower. As soon as he entered the building, his passport was confiscated and he was forced to sign a contract stating that he would become a professional conman.
Rakesh told CNN that a Chinese man threatened him: “If you don’t do this, I will kill you.”
When they refused to sign the contract, they were thrown into a prison-like place and were not provided with food or water. After three days there, Rakesh signed a contract to survive.
The gang members disguised him as Clara Semonov, a beautiful blonde investor living in Salt Lake City, USA.
Rakesh talked to potential victims for 16 hours a day, trying to gain their trust. His mission was to keep in touch with Americans, British, Brazilians, and Mexicans during their waking hours.
Afterwards, when the victims were ready to invest, they handed over their contact network to the team leader.
“70 to 80 percent (of potential victims) fall into fake love,” Rakesh said.
Rakesh said that inside the huge building of the fraud group where he worked, there were restaurants, grocery stores, and even daycare centers, and prostitution and drug use were also taking place.
He added that those who failed to fool enough victims were punished by having to squat or do hundreds of push-ups, or even being beaten with an electric pole.
Poppy grown in Myanmar
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CNN analyzed that Chinese criminal organizations took advantage of situations such as the civil war in Myanmar to carry out such transnational fraud.
Myanmar is in extreme chaos since the military coup in February 2021, with security deteriorating and drug trafficking organizations as well as online fraud rampant in outlying areas.
Although countries around the world are trying to help victims of such fraud and human trafficking, CNN pointed out that Myanmar’s military government is doing almost nothing to stop human trafficking.
“Armed groups provide land and protection in return for a share of the profits,” said Jeremy Douglas, regional director for Asia and the Pacific at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
dylee@yna.co.kr
Report via KakaoTalk okjebo
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2023/12/28 12:35 Sent
#beautiful #woman #met #social #media #turns #cryptocurrency #scam #Chinese #criminal #group
2023-12-28 03:35:30
