Slammed by borders closures in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic as well as by increased scrutiny by authorities, Chinese crime syndicates posing as investors shifted their operations from illicit gambling houses to online cybercrime fraud. The strategy has proven to be phenomenally successful.
Four years later, the syndicates continue to take advantage of chaos and corruption in a number of Southeast Asian countries to steal billions of dollars from vulnerable victims worldwide through romance scams and other long-con cyber fraud, aka "pig butchering." Operating from cyber-scam centers in Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar, the cybercriminals have a second set of victims as well: job seekers from China, India, the Philippines, and other countries in the region, lured with the promise of good-paying jobs at reputable firms, but instead, trapped in camps, forced to conduct the scams.
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