THE country is moving against the cyberscam tycoons making fortunes in South-East Asia, driven by mounting public pressure, analysts say.
Across South-East Asia, scammers lure internet users globally into fake romantic relationships and cryptocurrency investments.
Initially largely targeting Chinese speakers – from whom they have extracted billions, prompting rising public anger – the scammers have expanded their operations into multiple languages to steal vast sums from victims around the world.
Those conducting the scams are sometimes willing volunteers, sometimes trafficked foreign nationals who have been trapped and forced to work under threat of torture.
Last year, a series of crackdowns largely driven by Beijing – which wields significant economic and diplomatic influence in the region – saw thousands of workers released from scam centres in Myanmar and Cambodia and repatriated to their home countries, many of them to China.
Now Beijing has turned its focus to the bosses at the apex of the criminal pyramids, netting its biggest player so far with the arrest and extradition of Chen Zhi from Cambodia this week.
The arrests were “almost certainly a result of Chinese pressure ... coordinated behind closed doors”, according to Jason Tower, senior expert at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.
Chen, a Chinese-born businessman, was indicted in October by US authorities, who said his Prince Group conglomerate was a cover for a “sprawling cyber-fraud empire”.
Phnom Penh said it detained him following a request from Beijing, and after “several months of joint investigative cooperation” with Chinese authorities.
The sudden extradition of Chen from Cambodia – where he had close ties to political elites before his naturalised citizenship was revoked by the South-East Asian nation last month – follows China scooping up other wanted fugitives abroad to mete out justice on its own soil.
In November, She Zhijiang – the Chinese-born founder of Yatai Group, which allegedly built a notorious scam hub on the Thai-Myanmar border – boarded a flight to China in handcuffs after spending three years behind bars in Bangkok.
The same month Beijing held talks with law enforcement agencies from Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam agreeing to “intensify joint efforts against transnational telecom and online fraud”.
China earlier publicly handed down death sentences to over a dozen members of powerful gang families with fraud operations in northern Myanmar, with their confessions of grisly crimes broadcast on national television.
There could be more high-profile arrests to come: weeks ago the Public Security Ministry issued arrest warrants for 100 more fugitives seen as the scam industry’s key financial backers, pledging Thursday to “cut off the flow”, “pull out the nails”, and “sever the chain”.
But while the alleged leaders of some major scam groups have been arrested, Jacob Sims, a transnational crime expert and visiting fellow at Harvard University’s Asia Center, said the status quo for the wider industry was unlikely to change without sustained and “extremely high” pressure from the international community.
“The vast majority of Cambodia’s hundreds of scam compounds are operating with strong support from the Cambodian government,” he said.
Cambodian officials deny allegations of government involvement and say authorities are cracking down. — AFP
