Every day, people in the United States and many other countries are being scammed—by phony customer service operators, romance fraudsters, and perpetrators of more complex cryptocurrency investment scams.
But those being scammed out of retirement savings, or college funds, probably do not realize the person on the other end of the phone is likely another victim, who has already paid with their freedom.
Revelations in recent months about the existence of vast scam centers along Burma’s border with Thailand, run by Chinese organized crime syndicates and human traffickers, have highlighted the sheer scale of international cybercrime.
Amy Miller, regional director of Acts of Mercy International, told The Epoch Times: “This is a new form of human trafficking. It’s human trafficking for forced criminality.”
She is based in Mae Sot, Thailand, just over the border from the cybercrime hubs, and has spoken to hundreds of scammers.
“These people have no other choice. It’s scam somebody or be electrocuted, scam somebody or be locked into a prison with your hands handcuffed above your head for days or weeks with no food or water,” Miller said.
“That is, obviously, the very severe side of the victimization that happens.”
Andy Jenkinson, a fellow of the Cyber Theory Institute and author of the book “Stuxnet to Sunburst: 20 Years of Digital Exploitation and Cyberwarfare,” said the cyber scam centers were “very, very profitable.”
“The annual losses to cybercrime globally is over $10 trillion, or put it another way, $32 billion a day,” he told The Epoch Times.
Matthew Hogan, a detective with Connecticut State Police and an officer on the Secret Service Financial Crimes Task Force, said the scammers in Burma (also known as Myanmar) were working on a variety of frauds, including romance scams and duping bank customers over the phone.
But he told The Epoch Times the biggest growth was in long-term scams known as “pig butchering,” which involved luring people into fake cryptocurrency investments.
The phrase comes from the Chinese term “sha zhu pan.”
“They see the victims as being the pigs, and they are fattening them by creating this lure of incredible investment opportunity. So the pig gets fattened…and at some point it’s time to butcher the pig,” Hogan said.
Hogan said the scams usually started with someone receiving an SMS or a direct message on social media from a stranger, who would then begin building a “rapport.”
“They won’t shy away from the fact that they’re Chinese. … The ones I’ve gotten are usually female and … they‘ll say, ’hey, my name is Emma, I actually work out in California,’ and they always espouse some kind of wealth in some capacity,” he said.
