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It's a bit of a shame that the article is written only from the Japanese perspective. I would have been more interested in knowing China's position over this whole affair. Given that:

- The original investors were Chinese

- The video footage shown is hosted on a Chinese platform

- The signage on the videos for "restaurants" and "hospitals" in the videos is in Chinese

- "A Chinese-style drum would echo through the compound each time a deposit of over $100,000 was received"

And the fact that Thailand receives a great deal of Chinese tourists, I expect at least some of the kidnappings affecting Chinese citizens - and then some of the scam victims to be Chinese as well.

I would expect China to be more affected and to able to exert more influence over this situation than Japan.

I was looking at the Wikipedia article for the "Global Organized Crime Index" today, and Myanmar is #1, above Colombia and Mexico. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Organized_Crime_Index

I always thought that people willfully participate in scams to make more money. For example, I know there are quite a few telephone scam centers in India, that call US folks for SSN fraud etc. I thought these folks just work for salary.

It's scary to look at the scale of 'organized' crime / modern slavery. This is almost like Squid Games.

These might be features of large scale purpose-built scam centers, but there are myriad smaller centers occupying apartment blocks, whole floors of office towers, and of course ex-Casino buildings and so on.

eg Cambodia is especially rife with these. There are so many recently-built apartment blocks that lie empty, often built with corrupt money anyway, they make easy and fairly low-key dens.

they also kidnap people at neighbour country

so if you travel alone at this area, be safe and stay with crowd in public area

This is about to get way worse with AI. They'll be able to call you, say nothing, you'll answer, "hello?" and then hang up and by then they've cloned your voice and left a message on your parents' answering machine that sounds like you begging for them to transfer money because you're in danger. They'll be video calling everybody on linkedin with a job in accounting and will have the face and voice of their boss, asking them to transfer money. The situation is about to be terrible, and the only thing keeping it remotely in check is that most people choose to be somewhat moral.

Will AI take their jobs? This seems like what current LLMs would be best at.

There was a talk on the last CCC that covered romance scams from "call centers" in similar conditions in Myanmar. It gives some insights into the daily life from the perspective of someone who managed to flee the compound and take some documents with him. I was very surprised at the level of sophistication and organization that went into this scam. I knew about the tech support scam centers, but I still saw romance scam as something done on the individual level, not fully organized.

Talk is in German, but dubbed into English by the community. https://media.ccc.de/v/38c3-erpressung-aus-dem-internet-auf-...

Scams will not end until all international transactions are insured and reversible.

Japan should qualify any future ODA to Myanmar requires the junta goes in and breaks up these scam centers and put the scam owners in jail.

There's a Chinese movie that has a plot which revolves around this: No More Bets

The Southeast Asian country it's supposed to take place in isn't explicitly named, but Myanmar, Cambodia, and Thailand were critical of the movie anyway.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_More_Bets.

No mention of Starlink, which they have adopted en masse. It would be trivial to shut them off from it given their locations are very well-known.

lot of men from kerala india get caught in these scams. sucks that indian govt isn't doing anything about kidnapping of their citizens.

I used to think of Myanmar as soft spoken Buddhist people with slow pace of life. now of think of the country as a 'scam central'.

Here is a good documentary about these scam centers, where some management staff even openly admit what is going on there:

https://youtu.be/kSNn2pHtRH4?si=6WAbOG4p6bd80dJ8