Power cut to site of global, billion-dollar scam industry. But will it halt the swindling?

Bangkok (CNN) — Thailand cut electricity supplies on Wednesday to several areas in neighboring Myanmar that are home to sites at the center of a global, billion-dollar online scam industry.

As of Wednesday afternoon, at least one of the scam compounds was still operating, according to a local NGO in contact with workers inside one location. However, it’s unclear whether the cuts impacted other scam site operations in the area.

Online scam factories – many run by Chinese crime syndicates – have proliferated in Myanmar, which has been riven by a bloody civil war since the military seized power in 2021.

Often lured by the promise of well-paid jobs or other enticing opportunities, workers are routinely held against their will and forced to carry out online fraud schemes in heavily guarded compounds, where former detainees say beatings and torture are common.

On Wednesday, Thailand’s Interior Minister Anutin Charnvirakul toured a control station at the national electricity grid as staff pulled the plug on supplies to five locations across the border, in an event broadcast live on television.

Thailand “has stopped the electricity supply to Myanmar in five locations based on the decision of the National Security Council,” he told reporters.

“The electricity supply is not being stopped because the companies violated the contract, but because the electricity is being misused for scams, drugs and call centers,” he said.

One of those locations was in the town of Myawaddy, on the banks of a river that divides Thailand from Myanmar, and close to some of the largest scam compounds that NGOs say house thousands of workers. Several of the compounds lie near the border, where they can take advantage of more reliable electricity and telecoms services from Thailand.

Renewed focus on the sites came last month when a Chinese actor, having flown to Bangkok for what he thought was a movie casting call, was picked up at the airport and driven across the border into Myanmar and forced to work in a scam center there.

The scam compounds have operated for years, shielded by corruption and lawlessness that has long saturated Myanmar’s border regions — and only worsened after years of devastating civil war.

But Thailand has come under increased pressure to help curb the criminal activity and has held a series of high-profile meetings recently that suggest officials in Myanmar, Thailand and China may make stronger moves to crack down on the syndicates.

Thailand’s Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra is currently visiting Beijing, where she will meet Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

China’s Foreign Ministry said Wednesday that Beijing was “highly concerned” about recent incidents involving online scammers “at the Thailand-Myanmar border,” foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said in a daily briefing.

The scam compounds function much like small cities, with restaurants, grocery stores and even daycare centers, according to former workers previously interviewed by CNN. Besides scam operations, the sites also provide real estate for gambling and prostitution.

Myawaddy alone is home to about 6,500 victims from 23 countries being held under duress in scam compounds, including about 4,500 Chinese nationals, according to an estimate from the Civil Society Network for Victim Assistance in Human Trafficking, a Thai NGO fighting against human trafficking.

Thailand has previously cut electricity supplies to scam sites near its border with Myanmar in recent years. However, it’s unclear if those prior cuts had any impact on operations.

In the event there were electricity cuts, compound bosses could switch to diesel-run generators for power, and Elon Musk’s Starlink – which is used elsewhere in Myanmar by various ethnic rebel groups – for internet connectivity.

‘Tonight you will see the lights’

Thailand’s cuts Wednesday also targeted Myanmar’s Three Pagodas Pass, which links southeastern Myanmar and western Thailand, prompting concerns among locals who worried how they would cope.

“For businessmen, they have money to buy generators for electricity and work for their businesses,” one resident told CNN. “But, for us poor locals, we can’t afford to buy generators.”

A resident of Thailand’s Mae Sot, which sits across the river from Myawaddy in Myanmar, said he doubted the power cuts would stop the scam centers.

“Tonight you will see the lights on in Shwe Kokko,” he said, referring to a notorious compound visible across the border.

The abduction of Chinese actor Wang Xing has brought renewed focus to the scams. Just days after he was reported missing in Mae Sot, Thai police said they located him in Myawaddy and brought him back to Thailand.

His subsequent safe return to China has spurred hundreds of Chinese families to call on their government to help to find and free their loved ones, who they believe are still trapped in the scam centers. Some have been missing for months or even years, their families say.

More than four years on from its coup, Myanmar’s military continues to fight multiple fronts across the country against powerful armed ethnic militias to hold onto power. More than 5,000 civilians have been killed and 3.3 million people displaced by the fighting, according to a United Nations report last September.

Amid the political turmoil, Myanmar has become a cyber scam hotspot, where fraud, cybercrime, human trafficking, money laundering and corruption have flourished, often with the tacit consent of the junta, experts say.

China previously worked with authorities in Myanmar to crack down on scam centers in northern Shan state, near the Chinese border. In 2023, as ethnic rebel groups gained ground against the junta, powerful warlord families – backed by the military to rule the region and oversee these fraud operations – were apprehended and handed to Chinese police.

Chinese authorities say more than 53,000 Chinese “suspects” – including trafficked victims – have been sent back to China from scam compounds in northern Myanmar.

But many scam centers have moved further south in Myanmar, including to Myawaddy, according to NGOs and experts who have long tracked these criminal operations.

CNN’s Nectar Gan and Helen Regan contributed reporting.

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