Myanmar scam centres using Musk’s Starlink booming despite crackdown

Karen Border Guard Force members inspect a workplace in Shwe Kokko, Myawaddy, during a crackdown on scam centre-linked illicit activity. (AFP pic)MAE SOT: Scam centres in Myanmar blamed for swindling billions from victims across the world are expanding fast just months after a crackdown that was supposed to eradicate them, an AFP investigation has found.New buildings have been springing up inside the heavily guarded compounds around Myawaddy on the Thailand-Myanmar border at a dizzying pace, with others festooned with dishes for Elon Musk’s Starlink service, satellite images and AFP drone footage show.Starlink has gone from nowhere at the time of the crackdown in February to becoming Myanmar’s biggest internet provider every day from July 3 until Oct 1, according to data from the APNIC Asian regional internet registry.The US Congress Joint Economic Committee told AFP they have begun an investigation into Starlink’s involvement with the centres. It has the power to make Musk testify before it.SpaceX, which owns Starlink, did not reply to AFP requests for comment.China, Thailand and Myanmar forced pro-junta Myanmar militias who protect the centres into promising to “eradicate” the compounds in February. They freed around 7,000 people – most Chinese citizens – from the brutal call centre-style system, which the United Nations says runs on forced labour and human trafficking.Many workers told AFP they were beaten and forced to work long hours by scam bosses who target victims across the globe with telephone, internet and social media cons.Starlink has topped the APNIC ranking of Myanmar internet providers for all but one week since July 3, after first appearing at number 56 in the list in late April.Only weeks after the headline-grabbing releases, building work on several of the centres had started along the Moei River, which forms the frontier with Thailand.AFP analysis of satellite images from Planet Labs PBC found dozens of buildings going up or being altered in the largest of the compounds, KK Park, between March and September.New roads and a roundabout had also been added, with the security checkpoint at its entrance greatly extended. AFP drone footage also captured major construction going on, with cranes and labourers hard at work on what appeared to be large office blocks.At least five new ferry crossings across the Moei River have also appeared to supply the centres from the Thai side, satellite images show.Construction work has also been going on at several of the other 27 suspected scam centres in the Myawaddy cluster, AFP analysis found, including what the US Treasury called the “notorious” Shwe Kokko centres, north of Myawaddy.‘Abhorrent’Last month, the US sanctioned nine people connected to Shwe Kokko and the Chinese criminal kingpin She Zhijiang, founder of the multistorey Yatai New City centre there.Senator Maggie Hassan, the leading Democrat on the US Congressional committee, has called on Musk to block the Starlink service to the fraud factories.“While most people have probably noticed the increasing number of scam texts, calls, and emails, they may not know that transnational criminals halfway across the world may be perpetrating these scams by using Starlink internet access,” she said.The senator wrote to Musk in July demanding answers to 11 questions about Starlink’s role.Former California prosecutor Erin West, who now heads the Operation Shamrock group campaigning against the centres, said: “It is abhorrent that an American company is enabling this to happen.”While still a cybercrime prosecutor, she warned Starlink in July 2024 that the mostly Chinese crime syndicates that run the centres were using its dishes, but received no reply.Americans are among the top targets of Southeast Asia scammers, the US treasury department said, losing an estimated US$10 billion last year, up 66% in 12 months.Up to 120,000 people may be being “forced to carry out online scams” in the Myanmar centres, according to a UN report in 2023.It said another 100,000 are likely being held in similar conditions in Cambodia.

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