With the heavy blow to telecom fraud in China, most domestic telecom fraud gangs have now moved abroad, especially in Southeast Asia. Initially, telecom frauds transferred abroad will be entrenched in Southeast Asia such as the Philippines and Malaysia, but in the past five years, northern Myanmar has gradually become the preferred residence for these fraud groups.
Zhou Jun is an insider who is familiar with police cases. According to incomplete statistics, there are about 100,000 people engaged in telecom fraud in this area. And these telecom fraud gangs, which have sneaked abroad and grown wantonly in northern Myanmar, are targeting at compatriots in China.
Northern Myanmar mainly refers to the four autonomous regions on the border between China and Myanmar. They are controlled by four military armed forces independent of the central government and are in a state of "warlord separatism". These places are deeply influenced by China culture, and are very similar to Yunnan in living habits and language. The official language includes Chinese, which can circulate RMB, and can also use the signals of China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom.
For the needs of economic development, the local military government even set up a special economic development zone to provide special business licenses for these criminals engaged in telecom fraud to support the development of telecom fraud. It is for these reasons that North Myanmar has become a paradise for fraudsters.
The following is Zhou Jun’s dictation:
Every time you successfully defraud 500 thousand, you will set off a bunch of firecrackers to celebrate.
In the Spring Festival of 2021, I went to North Myanmar again.
Every once in a while, my biggest feeling is that the construction here is too fast. Office buildings have sprung up and roads have been repaired quickly. However, these new office buildings are basically rented to gangs engaged in telecom fraud.
It was also during the Spring Festival this year that I realized one thing. Every time I used to come here, I always heard the sound of fireworks and firecrackers one after another at night. They sounded in different places, and sometimes they were awakened by firecrackers at two or three in the morning. We will feel strange: why do we set off firecrackers every night?
Later, I finally learned that firecrackers were set off by telecom fraud gangs. This seems to have become a custom. Every time they successfully swindle 500,000 yuan, they set off a bunch of firecrackers to celebrate.
This bunch of fireworks set off in the sky is the footnote of this magical reality. Those victims in China were cheated out of everything, but here, it is their achievement worth celebrating.
Here, the telecom fraud industry is called "cash net", which is harmful to society, but it is legal in the local area. Telecom fraud gangs will pay the military government, create jobs and drive consumption. Their gathering has also promoted the development of all walks of life around them, including those who provide network services for these fraud gangs, those who deliver takeout food and those who open hotels … The local government is happy with the changes brought about by the arrival of telecom fraud. The buildings there are getting higher and higher, and the bumpy mud roads have become cement roads.
Historically, opium was cultivated and drugs were produced in these places. Local people will also be infected with drugs, which has strong social harm. Unlike telecom fraud, scammers don’t target local people. The targets of these fraud gangs smuggled from China to northern are all China people with mobile phones and computers in China.
In 2015, when telecom fraud gangs appeared sporadically in northern Myanmar, the domestic police were quite optimistic, because the local police cooperated well with the domestic police and the arrest was easy. They also discussed the technical aspects of the crackdown with the domestic police.
I remember once, the domestic police locked a fraud gang, but the arrest inside the gang was blocked because they could not open the iron gate of their den. When the fraudsters learned that the police were coming, they threw all their tools into the river from the second floor. After the evidence was destroyed, the criminals were still very arrogant and stood on the rooftop, challenging the domestic police with gestures.
Faced with this situation, the local police chose to shoot directly, and these talents surrendered. Finally, because of the destruction of evidence, the domestic police had no reason to arrest them, while the local police took everyone away and locked them up for a long time on the grounds of obstructing the police from handling cases.
Before October 2018, the cooperation between domestic police and local police was smooth. This is a win-win situation, the domestic police caught people, and the various living materials of those gangs that could not be taken away were confiscated by the local police. The local per capita salary is very low, and the monthly salary of the police is 300 yuan RMB. Those materials that can’t be taken away are a considerable income for them.
However, since October 2018, the attitude of the local police has changed, and the change is said to come from the fact that high-level officials were bribed by fraud gangs. Later, they also set up an economic development zone to handle the business license of "cash network business" for fraud gangs, and fraud business began to enter the room. Of course, paying a high monthly "protection fee" is also a necessary condition for every fraud group to survive locally.
More than 100 million people are engaged in telecom fraud in northern Myanmar.
Fraud gangs have brought rich economic returns to the local area. And some young people in China, attracted or lured by attractive job advertisements, went on and on to sneak into northern Myanmar.
Fraud gangs have outlined a dream of getting rich for them, and they can earn more than 10,000 yuan a month just by chatting. When these young people arrived in North Myanmar, they found that there was a great discrepancy between advertising and reality. What they are doing here is a clear crime in China, and making money is not as easy as they think.
If you regret it and want to leave, you need to pay at least 30 thousand yuan for redemption. If you can’t afford it, men will be asked to sell drugs and women will be asked to engage in prostitution. In the local area, gambling and pornography are legal industries. This is an abyss, as long as you step into that step, it will be difficult to get out again.
In China, telecom fraud was first brought by fraudsters in Taiwan Province, and then copied by some Fujian people. In some areas of Fujian, even an entire village engaged in telecom fraud. Now, the original Fujian people have generally become the bosses at the tip of the telecom fraud pyramid in northern Myanmar, and their people come from all over the country.
It is estimated that there are hundreds of thousands of people engaged in telecom fraud throughout northern Myanmar. Over the years, I have also dealt with many young people at the bottom of this industry. Most of them are "problem of juvenile" with poor academic performance, and their families are good and bad. Some time ago, the domestic police rescued a 16-year-old Shanghai girl. The girl’s family condition was good. Because she didn’t want to go to school again, she came to northern Myanmar with her netizens. In the fraud gang, what she needs to do is very simple, that is, to send a trembling voice every day, show her beauty and life, attract fans and add the designated WeChat in the gang. And these fans attracted by her have become the targets of gang fraud.
Because her daughter disappeared, her family called the police, and finally the girl was found by the domestic police. The rescued girl also blamed her mother for "ruining her dream of making money". Because the girl was under 16 years old, she was not investigated for criminal responsibility. Other adult fraudsters who report to the domestic police for help will be considered as surrenders, and they will still face criminal prosecution after being rescued by the domestic police.
Because the military government in northern Myanmar is not under the management of the central government of Myanmar, the passport doesn’t work here. The legal pass recognized here is the border pass, which has certain conditions. The border between China and Myanmar is more than 2,000 kilometers long. There is no obvious barrier. There are mountains and water, and many places come over as soon as they pull their trousers. Smuggling has become a way for Chinese people to reach northern Myanmar, and it has also become an industry. In the early years, the price of 200 yuan can find a way to successfully smuggle. After the outbreak of the epidemic last year, the price of smuggling has also risen. I heard that several people were caught by the border guards some time ago, and each person gave tens of thousands of yuan to the snakehead.
In northern Myanmar, there are as few as four or five people and as many as two or three thousand. The types of fraud include impersonating public security organs to enforce the law, defrauding loans, chatting naked, cashing in bills, investing in wealth management, killing pigs and so on. Most fraud lists are tens of thousands of yuan, and a few can reach millions or even tens of millions. Most fraudulent orders give a small commission to a single person.
In the past two years, the most harmful thing is the "killing pig plate". Simply put, this kind of fraud means that the liar will pretend to be a perfect lover, fall in love with the victim online, and finally guide the victim to invest or gamble on their designated website. When the victim invests a lot of money, the lover and the website disappear together.
Gangs engaged in "pig killing" fraud have an assembly line-like division of labor. Some people are responsible for finding pigs to kill, others are responsible for chatting with pigs, and technicians are responsible for building websites for "killing pigs".
I came into contact with a well-paid female white-collar worker, who was cheated by the "pig-killing dish" for 6 million yuan. She came to report the case and asked us to find the person who cheated her, not asking for her money back in the end, but just asking if he was sincere about himself.
The "killing pig plate" just uses people’s emotional needs to gain the trust of the victims, and then uses people’s greed to guide the victims to invest money.
More and more complicated fraud routines
The detection of telecom fraud cases is a technical job, and only when someone reports the case can the domestic police solve the case. Although the domestic police all know which floor of a building in northern Myanmar is a telecom fraud gang, they can’t arrest them without a case. Only when someone reports a crime, the domestic police will look for the place where this gang is located according to all kinds of information he provides, because the criminal gang caught in this way can determine their criminal evidence and form a complete evidence chain.
In my memory, the most successful case was an arrest in 2017. The criminal gang hid on the second floor of a building materials market. At that time, the weather was very hot, the door of criminal gangs was open, and the office environment was not good. Only fans were installed in the office on a hot day. When the domestic police arrived, they were working, and they got all the evidence such as computers and mobile phones, so they were caught red-handed. The evidence was clear and the case was solved smoothly. The scam of this gang is to find people who want to borrow money through baidu promotion, pretend that they can help with the loan, and then charge the victims in various names. In the end, the domestic police arrested ten criminals.
However, there are not many such smooth times. In a large-scale crackdown in 2017, the domestic police dispatched more than 1,000 policemen, but in the end, because of some strategic mistakes, only more than 300 criminals were arrested. Sometimes the domestic police took people back, but because of the lack of evidence, they had to let them go, and these people went back to northern Myanmar to continue to engage in telecom fraud.
The new trend now is that the degree of integration of various crimes is getting higher and higher. This also makes it more and more difficult for the domestic police to solve the case. For example, gambling and fraud show an integrated form, which is not only reflected in the form of fraud and gambling, but also in operation and management. The local military government will entrust casinos to manage fraud gangs. Because the casino itself has to pay protection fees and taxes. So the management of these casinos will set up their own companies or jointly set up management committees with development zones to manage fraud gangs.
Before telecom fraud entered northern Myanmar, the best local houses were owned by casinos. In the past, there were few tall buildings with more than six floors here. The first floor is used as a physical casino, and the second floor and above are rented to fraud gangs, so that the casino collects rent and management fees. The management fee received was handed over to the local military government together with part of the casino’s income.
In this process, the owner of the casino found that telecom fraud was very profitable, so he began to take a stake in telecom fraud. Casinos are in cahoots with telecom fraud. There are many similarities between gambling and "killing pigs", and like online casinos, killing pigs also requires buying domain names and constantly changing websites. It’s just that gambling will make some profits, and the "killing pig plate" will directly circle the money and run away. Casinos have good technology in this respect, which can be directly provided to the "pig killing plate". In addition to technical collusion, casinos and fraud gangs will also share customers. These complicated reasons make gambling and fraud more integrated.
The way of telecom fraud has gradually escalated, which also makes the domestic police dare not slack off, and it is necessary to step up the improvement of the technical level of domestic police in solving cases.
Because of the impact of the epidemic, it is inconvenient for the police to go abroad to handle cases. These fraud gangs have basically been in a state of uncontrolled and barbaric growth in the past year. At the moment when the global epidemic has not been extinguished, I am not optimistic that they may have an explosive growth in the next few years.
(Note: In order to protect the privacy of the respondents, Zhou Jun is a pseudonym)
Source "Observatory", ending fraud
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