![]() In total, China has detained some 4,000 suspects and returned them back to China. “We all went out with this wonderful sense of hope, but then reality slammed us in the face,” he said. He has been sharing his story on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, to alert others to the risks and says people often contact him about relatives trapped in cyber scam compounds. He returned to China in late June and was questioned by Chinese police but not detained. Zhang showed the AP copies of his deportation notice from the Thai Immigration police and a temporary ID card. His family helped him scrape together some 40,000 yuan ($5,472) to pay off the debt Gao claimed he owed him, and he slipped away one night, swimming across the Moei River into Thailand, where he turned himself in to Thai police, who contacted the Chinese Embassy. He asked to go back home, saying there was a family emergency. That might have raised a red flag but it was only once he got to Myanmar that Zhang realized his predicament. ![]() But Gao reassured him that he wouldn’t be doing anything illegal and said the restaurant would have plenty of customers since many cyber scam businesses were operating in the area. Since a 2021 coup, military-controlled Myanmar has been embroiled in civil conflict. The pay would be double what Zhang made in China. Gao suggested he go work in Myawaddy, in eastern Myanmar’s Kayin state, teaching a local chef how to cook Chinese dishes in Gao’s new restaurant. Zhang and his wife wanted extra money to pay for in vitro fertilization to have another child. Giving what he said was his last name, Gao, he claimed to be a broker and travel agent for Chinese living in Thailand. Zhang was working in Thailand and on a visa run to Laos when he met the man who lured him to the scam compound in Myanmar. The criminals have “ridden on the shoulders of the Belt and Road Initiative,” said Tower, who outlined links between the criminals and Chinese state enterprises, think tanks and government officials in a 2020 report written for the United States Institute of Peace. They use scripts, images of models and influencers and translation software to trick the people they contact by phone or online into parting with their money. The scammers divide their targets into two categories: Chinese and non-Chinese. The syndicates also are known for “pig butchering” cons, where scammers entice individuals, often halfway across the world, to invest their money in bogus schemes after duping them into digital romances. “From the vantage point of the Chinese government, it’s a source of extreme embarrassment that you have so many of these Chinese criminals operating all across Southeast Asia,” said Jason Tower, an expert on transnational crime with the United States Institute of Peace. Some also cooperate with organized crime gangs. Such places are generally under the control of ethnic minority armed groups, either opposed to or allied with Myanmar’s central government. Myanmar’s border regions long have been a magnet for criminals - historically including drug producers and traffickers - because of lax law enforcement. Many are based in places where China has financed big construction projects through leader Xi Jinping’s signature Belt and Road Initiative. The schemes based in countries like Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia are run by Chinese bosses hand-in-hand with local elites.
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