Huge online scam operations are flourishing in war-torn Myanmar – I travelled there to find out why

South-east Asia has become the “ground zero” for the global online scamming industry, according to the UN, costing victims billions of US dollars each year. Scam operations are run by Chinese crime syndicates from fortified compounds in countries like Myanmar, which has been embroiled in a nationwide armed conflict since 2021.

The size of the scam industry has led to sustained security crackdowns in recent years. This has included a number of joint operations involving police forces from multiple countries. However, despite releasing tens of thousands of trafficked workers from these compounds, the raids have done little to wipe out scam operations.

In October, for example, Myanmar’s military stormed a major scam hub in the south-eastern Karen State. The operation was, according to military spokesperson Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun, proof that the army would “completely eradicate online scam activities from their roots”. But, just days later, local reporting indicated that work was continuing uninterrupted at other compounds in the area.

Since 2018, I have been carrying out fieldwork along Myanmar’s borders with China and Thailand. I have found that checkpoint controls vary widely. This asymmetry determines where in Myanmar scam hubs emerge and helps explain why operations are often able to relocate rather than shut down when faced with pressure.

China’s border with northern Myanmar is heavily securitised. Before travellers reach the border, they must pass internal checkpoints on the main roads that lead into the border counties of Yunnan province.

Police routinely check ID cards and ask people whose household registration is outside Yunnan to explain their visit. Roadside posters, digital billboards and village loudspeakers repeat the same message: do not cross the border to work in scam parks.

Local police officers I interviewed described it as now “almost impossible” for ordinary people to cross informally from China into Myanmar. And restrictions on crossing the border have tightened since late 2023, when the armed conflict in northern Myanmar intensified.

China also exercises tight telecommunications and financial controls. Real-name registration for phone SIM cards, anti-fraud apps installed on smartphones and close scrutiny of cross-border money transfers all raise the risks of running large-scale scam centres near Chinese territory.

The situation is different along Thailand’s border with Myanmar. This border has long served as a trade corridor, migration route and lifeline for refugees fleeing conflict in Myanmar. Decades of instability there have left a dense landscape of refugee camps, informal crossings and aid infrastructure in the Thai borderlands.

Towns such as Mae Sot in western Thailand, which sit only a short drive from Karen State where scam compounds have proliferated in recent years, have become key hubs for trade and refugee support. The same roads and bridges that carry refugees, aid workers and traders are also used by brokers moving trafficked workers.

Thai authorities do operate checkpoints and immigration controls. But compared with the Chinese border, these are shaped more by humanitarian concerns and longstanding cross-border social ties. It is relatively easy for foreign visitors to access Myanmar through the Thai border, as I discovered on a recent research trip.

I passed three checkpoints between the town of Tak and Mae Sot on a mini-bus and, despite prominent warning signs about scam compounds at the final checkpoint, officers checked documents quickly and let travellers through. This accessibility also makes it simple for scam recruiters, middlemen and some workers to move in and out of Myanmar.

The asymmetric border checkpoints help explain why scam hubs have clustered in Karen State, where Thai police estimate up to 100,000 people work in scam centres, while many northern compounds near China have closed down.

Myanmar’s moving checkpoints

Inside Myanmar’s contested borderlands, checkpoints are not run by a single authority. They are managed by a patchwork of ethnic armed organisations and border guard forces, each of which control their own stretch of road or river.

While these checkpoints focus on ensuring security, they are also a source of income. Local commanders and militias use them to tax goods, vehicles and people, with checkpoints set up, relaxed or moved when alliances or financial interests change.

This fragmented system creates room for scam operators to keep compounds running or to relocate workers and equipment when pressure from the authorities builds, especially when operators share profits with the people manning the checkpoints.

Interviews I have conducted with local scam brokers and police officers in China and Thailand suggest that information about impending crackdowns often circulates through these cross-border networks of recruiters, militias and complicit officials well in advance.

Reporting from Karen State suggests that ethnic militias escorted Chinese scam workers out of hubs such as KK Park and Shwe Kokko ahead of recent raids to cities like Yangon and Mandalay, charging substantial “fees” for safe passage.

South-east Asia’s scam industry bends under pressure, but it does not break. Checkpoints inside Myanmar and at its borders do not close the trade – they help decide where it goes next.

Xu Peng receives funding from the Serious Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Evidence (SOC ACE) research programme for the project “The Centrality of the Margins: Borderlands, Illicit Economies and Uneven Development”, and from the Cross-border Conflict Evidence, Policy and Trends (XCEPT) research programme for the project “TRACE: Checkpoints, Conflict, and the Politics of Circulation”.