A former scammer and local police reveal how Chinese masterminds are leading giant scam centers.

“The Chinese gangs taught me how to make my profile look credible, gain followers and post regularly. After finishing my training, I started identifying my victims through social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Line,” said Narin, a 20-year-old from northern Thailand.

This wasn’t just an isolated incident but part of a troubling trend. Thailand leads Asia in scam calls and text messaging, with a staggering 78.8 million incidents reported since last year, according to the country’s Office of the National Economic and Social Development Council.

Now, the gangs, often led by Chinese masterminds, are expanding into the U.S. and appear to be ensnaring more Americans.

In 2023, U.S. authorities issued a stark warning about the growing danger of Americans being trafficked into scam syndicates in Southeast Asia. The seriousness of the situation became evident in December 2023, when the Department of Justice announced the indictment of four individuals based in the United States. These individuals were accused of laundering over $80 million in profits from scam operations.

To warn others, Narin, an ex-scammer, told Newsweek about his journey into the dark underbelly of cybercrime. In Thailand, he traveled from Chiang Mai to Chiang Rai before crossing the border into Tachileik, Myanmar. From there, he was transported to Laukkai, a Myanmar border city notorious for call center scams.

Recruited by friends of friends, he trusted them out of desperation for money. But once in Myanmar, he quickly realized the true nature of the operation. Fearful for his safety, Narin felt trapped and couldn’t leave.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldEnglish
    251·
    3 months ago

    They don’t seem like they’re very good at it, but I guess if you snare even 1%…

    This is one I got not too long ago:

    • TheFriar@lemm.eeEnglish
      8·
      3 months ago

      I don’t think those are the ones you need to worry about—or, should I say, that are the more professional ones. The real ones are the ones who act like people, not businesses. You get random messages that say “hey! I lost my work phone and transferred the numbers, but I don’t remember whose number this is.” Or find a way to send a picture of a pretty girl and say, “remember me? We exchanged numbers a while ago!” Or some shit like that. I think those are the more effective and dangerous ones. I get a lot of those.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5·
        3 months ago

        I get my share of those too. Too bad for them I don’t know anyone.

        (White space included to show why they contacted the wrong guy.)

    • Maeve@kbin.earth
      62·
      3 months ago

      I know a kid that fell for the scam recording contact twice, second time cost him a grand, dunno what the first time cost. I warned him but the desperation is real.

    • NIB@lemmy.worldEnglish
      31·
      3 months ago

      They are deliberately bad and obvious because they want stupid people. If those messages were more realistic, they would have had a lot more “hits” that would just waste their time because ultimately, they wouldnt be able to scam them as easily.

        • mosiacmango@lemm.eeEnglish
          10·
          3 months ago

          Maybe. It’s a common refrain from email spam that all of the misspellings and grammatical errors are intentional choices. There is no way to confirm or disprove it either way.

          However, in the “unlikely” column, the spam industry works on a “SaaS” model where the people that send out millions of spam emails are paid to do so by customers. They compromise email severs and end user devices to build up a fleet of machines to send out the messages.

          The spammers themselves don’t care if the customers content succeeds or not, so there is no incentive to help them write good spam. They just pull in the next sucker who thinks sending out 10 million badly worded emails will work to make them money.

          • sramder@lemmy.worldEnglish
            3·
            3 months ago

            Yeah, I wasn’t going to go and call that case-closed; industry tactics exposed, story at 11:00. It’s a theory and intentional or not (misspellings) I think there’s a definite possibility it’s working as described in some cases.

            I like the SaaS theory too, ransomware clearly operates using exactly that model… unfortunately there’s been a few investigations and a lot of it is just the intersection of actual and economic slavery. I suspect there’s some of what you propose as well, why not, right? If we can dream it up somewhere somebody’s probably trying it. But I’d also wager that once you achieve any real proficiency at this kind of low level scam, there’s opportunity in organized computer crime, spearfishing and pretexting scams, operations with more sophisticated planning.

  • Maeve@kbin.earth
    144·
    3 months ago

    he trusted them out of desperation for money

    As bad as we have it, they have it worse. There’s a lot to be grateful for, and a lot to work for. I dream of a world united in making sure every individual has their needs met and exceeded. It can only happen if we stop fighting culture wars and level the field, consistently, without becoming complacent, and passing that value to our children.