在一个无法无天的热带边境，全球诈骗行业蓬勃发展
【中美创新时报2025 年 2 月 28 日编译讯】（记者温友平编译）泰国与缅甸边境小镇湄索机场通常没有国际航班。但最近几天，数百人登上直飞中国的航班。他们从缅甸获救，在那里他们陷入了 21 世纪的祸害——网络诈骗工厂利用强迫劳动从全球受害者身上骗取了数百亿美元。《纽约时报》记者汉娜·比奇对此作了下述报道。
泰国与缅甸边境小镇湄索机场通常没有国际航班。但最近几天，数百人登上直飞中国的航班。他们从缅甸获救，在那里他们陷入了 21 世纪的祸害——网络诈骗工厂利用强迫劳动从全球受害者身上骗取了数百亿美元。
这些包机是多国行动的一部分，此前上个月一名中国演员被贩卖到一家诈骗中心工作，吓跑了中国游客，不敢去泰国旅游。救援行动由泰国、缅甸和中国官员协调，被认为是对这个诈骗行业的沉重打击。
但即使飞机向北飞行，这些诈骗中心（泰国边境视线范围内的现代化高楼大厦）的建筑工人仍在夜以继日地焊接和敲打，公然建造专门用于犯罪的仓库。被关在窗户被铁栏围起来的房间里的诈骗者不断从美国、中国和其他国家孤独的心和热切的投资者那里骗取钱财。
2021 年缅甸发生军事政变并随后爆发内战后，该国与泰国的边境爆发成为地球上最无法无天和最有利可图的地方之一。中国犯罪集团已经进入，与敌对派系达成协议，将雨林变成专门用于网络诈骗的高层定居点。
据联合国称，由于泰国政府未能强力干预，来自缅甸的中国黑帮和民兵指挥官已将数以万计的人偷渡到这些犯罪中心从事劳动。泰国还为诈骗中心提供电力和互联网，并充当建筑材料、酷刑工具甚至兰博基尼的渠道。
本月的突袭是针对诈骗中心的最新攻势，释放了数千名被骗后自己成为骗子的人。至少有 40 个国家的公民经常被 IT、工程或客户服务等高薪工作的虚假承诺所诱惑，被中国犯罪分子强迫参与加密货币欺诈、在线约会欺骗、TikTok 购物诈骗、WhatsApp 房地产欺诈、Instagram 深度伪造和 Facebook 欺诈。
据目击者或受害者称，这些骗子被关在这些牢房里，他们遭到殴打、电击，并被绑了好几个小时，姿势像被钉在十字架上。另一种酷刑是在碎石上爬行，直到膝盖和手流血。
上周，为纪念这次成功的营救行动，中国、泰国和缅甸官员手拉手庆祝他们所谓的统一打击跨国犯罪。在另一个网络犯罪温床柬埔寨，一次突袭行动也释放了其他人。
中国外交部发言人办公室周四在一份声明中告诉《纽约时报》，“中国正积极与泰国、缅甸等国开展双边和多边合作，严厉打击跨境网络赌博和诈骗犯罪。目前，许多网络赌博和诈骗窝点已被捣毁在海外，大批嫌疑人已被逮捕。”
但根据对大约二十几人的采访，这种自我吹嘘为时过早，其中一些人曾经或正在诈骗中心工作，另一些人则在帮助或从网络欺诈行业中获利的国家和民兵机构任职。
本月据称从诈骗仓库中获救的数千人仍然被困在缅甸强迫劳动的地狱和泰国自由的承诺之间。还有数万人仍被关押在诈骗工厂中。
“生意正常，”在其中一个网络犯罪中心工作的缅甸国民马米说。她在电话中说，和那里的许多缅甸公民一样，她是自愿工作的。
在当前的行动中，策划这个国际犯罪网络的主要参与者没有一个被打倒，该网络横跨数十个国家，以中国为中枢运作。2022 年，一名出生于中国的犯罪头目被捕，目前他被关押在泰国监狱，反对被引渡到中国，但这并没有减缓他被指控经营的诈骗城的建设。
“解决人口贩运和网络诈骗行动需要的不仅仅是被动的执法措施，”萨尔温江公共政策研究所的创始主任 Saw Kapi 在 2 月 21 日写道，该研究所专注于诈骗中心激增的地区。“这需要直面根本原因——治理失败、腐败以及有组织犯罪与政治和经济利益的纠缠。”
今年 1 月，随着中国演员王兴的失踪，这片边境地区诈骗中心的公开秘密——高度可见、高度刺激——震惊了公众意识。尽管他很快从缅甸的一个诈骗公园获释，但中国公众的愤怒情绪却蔓延开来，中国游客取消了在泰国的假期。
本月，泰国总理帕东丹·西那瓦访问了北京，她向中国领导人习近平承诺，她的政府正在严厉打击。在她访问之前，泰国宣布已经切断了边境另一边的电力，2023 年它也曾短暂切断过这一供应。中国公安部副部长来视察边境地区。
控制泰国边境附近地区并向中国公司出租土地的缅甸少数民族民兵领导人试图否认责任。目击者和被贩运的员工说，这些武装团体，有些与军政府结盟，有些与军政府作战，帮助提供了让欺诈中心的恐惧不断蔓延的力量。民兵还涉嫌参与其他非法贸易，从毒品和宝石到野生动物和木材。
叛军民主克伦仁慈军参谋长苏山昂将军表示，他在今年一些令人不安的照片在网上流传后才意识到他的领土上存在诈骗中心。但他警告不要相信所有诈骗中心工作人员表现出身体虐待迹象的照片。
“他们伤害了自己，并指责雇主虐待他们，”苏山昂说。
本文最初发表于《纽约时报》。
题图：泰国士兵为在缅甸东部诈骗中心工作的印尼国民提供安全保障，他们抵达泰国湄索后，于周四被遣返回印尼。Sakchai Lalit/美联社
附原英文报道：
On a lawless tropical border, the global scam industry thrives
By Hannah Beech New York Times,Updated February 27, 2025
Thai soldiers provided security for the transfer of Indonesia nationals, who had worked at scam centers in eastern Myanmar, on their arrival at Thailand’s Mae Sot before being sent back to Indonesia on Thursday.Sakchai Lalit/Associated Press
MAE SOT, Thailand — There are usually no international flights out of the airport in Mae Sot, a town on Thailand’s border with Myanmar. But in recent days, hundreds of people here boarded direct flights back home to China. They had been rescued from Myanmar, where they were ensnared in a 21st-century scourge — online scam mills that have used forced labor to bilk tens of billions of dollars out of victims worldwide.
The chartered flights were part of a multinational effort that followed the trafficking last month of a Chinese actor to work in a fraud center, which scared off Chinese tourists from visiting Thailand. The rescue missions, coordinated by officials in Thailand, Myanmar, and China, were pitched as a body blow to this industry of grift.
But even as the planes headed north, construction workers in these scam centers — modern tower blocks within sight of the Thai side of the frontier — continued to weld and hammer into the night, brazenly building warehouses dedicated to crime. Fraudsters confined to rooms with barred windows kept cajoling money out of lonely hearts and eager investors in the United States, China, and beyond.
Following a military coup in Myanmar in 2021 and an ensuing civil war, the country’s border with Thailand has exploded into one of the most lawless and lucrative places on Earth. Chinese criminal syndicates have moved in, making deals with rival factions to turn rainforests into high-rise settlements dedicated to online fraud.
With the Thai government failing to forcefully intervene, Chinese gangsters and militia commanders from Myanmar have smuggled tens of thousands of people across the riverine frontier to labor in these hubs of criminality, according to the United Nations. Thailand has also supplied the electricity and internet for the fraud centers and served as a conduit for construction materials, instruments of torture, and even the odd Lamborghini.
The raids this month were the latest offensive against the scam centers and freed thousands of people who were scammed into becoming scammers themselves. Often lured by false promises of good-paying jobs in IT, engineering, or customer service, citizens of at least 40 nations have been forced by Chinese criminals to engage in crypto-fraud, online dating deception, TikTok shopping swindles, WhatsApp real estate dodges, Instagram deepfakes, and Facebook trickery.
Confined to these compounds, the scammers, many of whom are Chinese, have been beaten, subjected to electric shock, and tied up for hours in a pose that mimics crucifixion, people who were witnesses to or victims of the abuse said. Another form of torture involves crawling on gravel, until knees and hands bleed.
Marking the successful rescue operations last week, Chinese, Thai, and Myanmar officials held hands and celebrated what they called a unified vanquishing of transnational crime. A raid in Cambodia, another hotbed of cybercrime, freed others, too.
“China is actively carrying out bilateral and multilateral cooperation with Thailand, Myanmar, and other countries to severely crack down on cross-border online gambling and fraud crimes,” the spokesperson’s office of the Chinese Foreign Ministry told The New York Times in a statement Thursday. “At present, many online gambling and fraud dens have been eradicated overseas, and a large number of suspects have been arrested.”
But such self-congratulation is premature, according to interviews with about two dozen people, some who have worked or are working in the scam centers and others who serve in national and militia bureaucracies that aid or profit from the cyberfraud industry.
Thousands of individuals who were supposedly rescued from the scam warehouses this month are still stranded between the hell of forced labor in Myanmar and the promise of freedom in Thailand. Tens of thousands more remain imprisoned in the fraud factories.
“Business is normal,” said Ma Mi, a Myanmar national who toils in one of the online crime hubs. She spoke by phone and said that, like many Myanmar citizens there, she was working voluntarily.
And none of the major players orchestrating this international criminal network, which spans dozens of countries and operates with a Chinese nerve center, have been taken down in the current campaign. The arrest in 2022 of a Chinese-born kingpin, who is now in a Thai prison fighting extradition to China, did not slow construction in the scam towns he is accused of having run.
“Addressing human trafficking and online scam operations requires more than reactive law enforcement measures,” wrote Saw Kapi, the founding director of the Salween Institute for Public Policy, which focuses on the region where the scam centers are proliferating, on Feb. 21. “It necessitates confronting the root causes — failure in governance, corruption, and the entanglement of organized crime with political and economic interests.”
In January, the open secret of scam centers on this stretch of border — highly visible, highly electrified — jolted the public consciousness with the disappearance of Wang Xing, a Chinese actor. Although he was quickly freed from a scam park in Myanmar, public outrage percolated in China, and Chinese tourists canceled holidays in Thailand.
This month, Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra of Thailand visited Beijing, where she promised China’s leader, Xi Jinping, that her government was cracking down. Before her trip, Thailand announced that it had shut off electricity to the other side of the border, something it had done briefly in 2023 as well. China’s vice minister of public security came to inspect the border zone.
Leaders of ethnic minority militias in Myanmar that control areas near the Thai border and lease land to Chinese companies sought to deny culpability. These armed groups, some aligned with the junta and some fighting it, help provide the muscle that keeps fear thrumming in the fraud hubs, witnesses, and trafficked employees said. The militias have also been implicated in other illicit trades, from drugs and gems to wildlife and timber.
General Saw San Aung, chief of staff of the Democratic Karen Benevolent Army, a rebel group, said he only became aware of the scam centers operating in his territory after some troubling photographs circulated online this year. But he cautioned against believing all images of scam center workers who exhibit signs of physical abuse.
“They harmed themselves and accused their employers of torture,” Saw San Aung said.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
