China sentences 5 to death for building, running criminal Myanmar fraud centers(cbsnews.com)
cbsnews.com
China sentences 5 to death for building, running criminal Myanmar fraud centers
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/china-myanmar-thailand-criminal-gangs-fraud-scam-centers-death-sentences/
6 comments
This article might help:
https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/03/27/1113782/scam-com...
These scam centers are run by criminal organizations and staffed by basically slaves. They're often tricked into coming, many from outside the country the center is located in, by false promises of legitimate employment, only to wind up imprisoned in the compound where they're forced to conduct scam operations under threat of beatings, torture, even death. It's a pretty horrible state of affairs.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/03/27/1113782/scam-com...
These scam centers are run by criminal organizations and staffed by basically slaves. They're often tricked into coming, many from outside the country the center is located in, by false promises of legitimate employment, only to wind up imprisoned in the compound where they're forced to conduct scam operations under threat of beatings, torture, even death. It's a pretty horrible state of affairs.
In 2022 42 Vietnamese workers fleeing human trafficking were captured on video as they escaped from a clandestine call center in a Cambodian casino, where they were being held against their will, and crossed the neighbouring river on foot, which separates Cambodia from Vietnam: https://www.rfa.org/english/news/cambodia/casino-workers-082...
The biggest safety risk in Southeast Asia is exactly this issue. I’ve always wanted to travel around the entire region — Myanmar, Thailand, and Cambodia all have magnificent Buddhist temple complexes. Unfortunately, the telecom fraud industry there is extremely dangerous, and there are frequent reports of people from China going missing after traveling there.
Relatively speaking, the safer countries right now are Malaysia, Vietnam, and Singapore. Thailand, because of this problem, has already lost a large number of Chinese tourists.
> [their crimes] led to the "deaths of six Chinese nationals, one Chinese national's suicide and injuries to several others,"
So it's not just running a fraud center
> Five defendants were given life imprisonment, while sentences ranging from three to 20 years were given to nine others.
Who is this about now?
> Many people staffing the fraud factories say they were trafficked into the hubs [...] [employees say they] were regularly beaten and tortured by their bosses
Is this how deaths and injuries were "lead to", from the earlier quote appearing much earlier in the article?
This article is such a mess, I'd open the court case if I had any chance of knowing what I'm looking at or having any vague familiarity with the legal system. Not that the court documents are linked anywhere. Why give up sources if you can get clicks I guess. It's interesting to read about nevertheless, e.g. I didn't know the work was performed under duress