This is a great interactive article about what it's like to be kidnapped and forced to work in these scam centers on the Myanmar border, lured by promise of jobs people are trapped, passports confiscated, phones stolen, 16-hour workdays spent defrauding victims online, cultivating fake relationships and pressuring them into investment or romance scams:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/17/world/asia/my...

What's Grandma supposed to do with all those Google Play gift cards now?

I heard that both sides of the ongoing civil war (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myanmar_civil_war_(2021%E2%80%...) work with these criminal organizations to secure foreign revenue for weapons purchases - but that it is primarily a junta-driven thing.

And that the people running them come from PRC Chinese organized crime (triads).

Seems like we're hearing a lot about this lately, it must have gotten real bad if there's suddenly all this movement to crack down on it.

As early as a few years ago, these people were engaged in fraudulent activities in Southeast Asia. Most of them were Chinese, but the Chinese government was too soft and did not take effective measures against the fraud. As a result, for a long time, these people did not receive the approval of the dispute until a Korean appeared.

"It [starlink] does not have licensed operations in Myanmar, but at least hundreds of terminals have been smuggled into the Southeast Asian nation."

So how do starlinks work in Myanmar if it's not licensed?