Myanmar’s scam empire gets worse, not better
Fewer Chinese are forced to come, but more workers are coming by choice
For Samuel, a sports teacher in Sierra Leone, a Facebook message promising a similar job in Thailand at ten times his salary was irresistible. Yet his dream curdled when he landed in Bangkok. Spirited across the border into Myanmar, he was tortured and coerced into the online-scam industry, and confined for ten months in a vast compound secured by barbed wire, high walls and armed guards. His job was to pose as an affluent Singaporean woman to defraud victims on eBay.
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This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the headline “Compound misery”
From the May 31st 2025 edition
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