Over 2,800 Chinese involved in telecom fraud cases in Myanmar repatriated to China

Beijing: Over 2,800 Chinese telecom fraud suspects who were part of gangs luring locals and foreigners to work in telecom scam centres along the Myanmar-Thailand border have been repatriated to China for trials.

A total of 2,876 Chinese telecom fraud suspects have been repatriated from Myawaddy in Myanmar to China following a joint crackdown launched by China, Myanmar and Thailand, the Chinese Ministry of Public Security said on Friday.

The mass repatriation marks a significant achievement in the joint operation between China, Myanmar and Thailand launched on February 20 and is a powerful deterrent to foreign criminal gangs, the ministry said.

Last month, a Chinese court sentenced four “key figures” involved in cross-border telecom fraud cases to life imprisonment as part of its stepped-up crackdown against the gangs' luring locals and foreigners to work in scam centres along the Myanmar-Thailand border.

Earlier in February, hundreds of people from 20 nationalities, including Indians, who were made to forcibly work in telecom fraud centres in Myanmar's Karen state were released by an ethnic armed group and sent to Thailand.

These groups lured foreign workers to work in the scam centres by offering good salaries or tricked them into thinking they would do different work in Thailand, not Myanmar.

The scammers recruited workers with skills in the languages of those targeted for cyber fraud, usually English and Chinese, BBC recently reported from Thailand.

These scammers posing as officials were involved in a host of banking frauds reported from India and several other countries in which victims were threatened to part with money in online calls.

These online scams in which people lost huge amounts of money created a stir in India, China and several other countries.

The freed foreign workers were handed over to the Thai army by the Democratic Karen Benevolent Army (DKBA), one of several armed factions which control territory inside Karen state, BBC reported earlier.

These armed groups have been accused of allowing the scam compounds to operate under their protection and tolerating the widespread abuse of trafficking victims who are forced to work in the compounds.

The case of a Chinese actor Wang Xing who was lured to Thailand with the promise of a film role and was then taken across the border to Myanmar and forced to take part in online scam operations went viral in China. He was later rescued by Thai authorities.