"Scam hubs linked to Naypyidaw", 16 May 2025

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Phone tracks and profit share

In a March 2025 article posted on its website, JFM asserted that the scam operations in the Southeast Asian nation “could not be possible without the involvement of the Myanmar military, militias under its command, and their associates.”

… An analysis by the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit C4ADS on phone geolocations or AdTech data throughout 2024 revealed frequent phone movements between Myawaddy scam centers and government buildings in Naypyidaw.

“These patterns suggest a hidden connection between organized crime and the military regime,” said C4ADS analyst Michael di Girolamo in an email interview with ADC. “Additionally, phones frequently travel between scam centers like Dongmei Zone and Taichang Park, indicating collaboration among criminal groups.”

C4ADS specializes in data-driven investigations of international illicit networks. For its scrutiny of the Myawaddy scam hubs, di Girolamo said that C4ADS “tracked the movements of multiple devices (labelled A to P)” across the scam centers and “key locations in Naypyidaw, revealing potential ties between organized crime and the Myanmar junta.”

“The data highlight frequent interactions between scam compounds like Shwe Kokko, KK Park, Dongmei Zone, and Taichang Park, as well as government buildings, suggesting collaboration among criminal syndicates and possible complicity of state actors,” he said.

Scam epicenter

In his testimony before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) …, USIP Country Director for the Burma Project Jason Tower said Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos form the epicenter of the escalating scam crisis. He also described the three countries as having the “weakest governance, highest levels of corruption, greatest levels of instability, and … most politically aligned with China” in Southeast Asia.

Commented NUG’s Tun Aung Shwe: “These scam operations are part of a wider regional criminal nexus involving human trafficking – luring workers from China, Southeast and South Asia, and even Africa – cybercrime networks connected to Chinese triads and regional mafias, as well as drug trafficking and arms smuggling in the borderlands.”

… Chinese-run gambling operations that targeted mainly Chinese nationals but were based in other countries were the predecessors of these scam centers. Gambling has been illegal in China …; unsurprisingly, the last few decades had many Chinese nationals visiting casinos overseas. Soon after their business-minded compatriots based abroad started offering gambling online …, Chinese citizens were also placing cyber bets.

…, the U.N. Human Rights Office released a report that decried the trafficking of “hundreds of thousands of people” who were being forced to engage in online scams that ranged from “romance-investment scams and crypto fraud to illegal gambling.” It estimated that there were about 120,000 individuals being forced into scamming in Myanmar and 100,000 in Cambodia, aside from thousands more in Laos and the Philippines…