I don't know if you think that the number of scam calls has decreased recently, anyway, the author and my family have probably not received any more scam calls for four or five months.
There is no doubt that our country's repeated crackdowns have terrified fraudsters. But do you think they're going to stop there? Surely not, it's just that they don't dare to stretch out their magic hand to us anymore.
Now, Southeast Asian scam syndicates are starting to focus on the U.S. market, I wonder if you think this is good news or bad news?
According to a report released by the U.S. Institute of Peace on Monday (May 13), in Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar, fraud groups illegally obtain $43.8 billion a year through various frauds! This is equivalent to 40% of the total GDP of the three countries.
With such huge profits, it is no wonder that many political and military figures in Southeast Asia will also be involved in it, acting as an umbrella for fraudsters. For example, northern Myanmar, northern Thailand, and the report mentions that Ly Yong Phat, a prominent member of parliament in Cambodia's current ruling party, owns a casino and hotel complex linked to a scam syndicate.
It is precisely for this reason that in recent years, we have mobilized state forces to intervene to basically eradicate the harm to the mainland.
Researchers' survey of recent fraud activity in Southeast Asia shows that scams targeting non-Chinese and other languages have increased significantly in recent months. According to the report, this is an apparent shift in the targeting of scam syndicates after a sustained crackdown by Chinese law enforcement.
These scam syndicates are working with interest groups in the Middle East, Africa, and India to spread the scope of wire fraud to other countries around the world. Jason Tower, Myanmar's official in charge of wire fraud, admitted: "In a very short period of time, the phenomenon has gone from a major regional crime problem to a global one. ”
According to the report, such scams caused about $3.5 billion in losses in the United States, $413 million in Canada and more than $750 million in Malaysia last year.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg, according to the Federal Trade Commission, the United States will lose more than $10 billion due to fraud in 2023, and in fact, some experts believe that the economic losses caused by wire fraud against the United States have already reached tens of billions of dollars. In the past, it was mainly Indian and American scammers, but now Southeast Asian scam groups are also targeting the U.S. market.
Across Southeast Asia, hundreds of thousands of people are still actively or coerced into electronic fraud, many of whom are forced to live in enclosed places with high walls and iron fences, surveillance, armed guards and torture chambers, and many citizens of various countries who have been deceived with the dream of making a fortune are forced to defraud every day.
The report also specifically mentions how the mainland has mobilized various forces to crack down on fraud in Southeast Asia, but as an American think tank, you know that it is impossible to have good things to say about us. Despite this, the researchers found that the scam did not disappear, and that the location and object of the crime began to systematically move to other places to defraud other regions.
Fraud syndicates have begun to aggressively recruit and force people who understand English to work for them, including training existing crime teams in English. Because of the U.S. government's lax management of wire fraud, wire fraud syndicates are now finding it easier and more rewarding to defraud Americans.
They especially like to defraud middle-aged and elderly Americans who have savings in their hands, and the fraud methods are actually not strange to our people, but Americans rarely come into contact with them, which is quite different from the style of Indian fraud groups.
In addition, the poor communication facilities in the United States make it difficult for middle-aged and elderly Americans to confirm the content of the fraud at the first time, and they are often tricked under the repeated urging of criminals.
Former White House scientist who was scammed and related media reports
Not only is it difficult for the U.S. government and relevant law enforcement agencies to effectively combat fraud, but it also often exacerbates the situation for victims. Not long ago, there was a sensational fraud case in the United States, a former White House scientist was defrauded of a pension of up to $655,000 by overseas fraudsters, but the fraud itself was not the focus of public opinion, but the IRS suddenly jumped out, believing that the scientist's defrauded funds were part of the income and needed to pay more than $100,000 in additional taxes.
This is not the first time the IRS has collected fraudulent taxes from victims. As a result, many victims of fraud are less afraid to report the crime and avoid further loss of property, and the IRS plays an abusive role in this.
At this stage, the U.S. government is very passive in its efforts to crack down on wire fraud, and the only measure is that President Biden signed a bill to protect the data privacy rights of U.S. citizens.
In December 2023, the U.S. Department of Justice announced the indictment of four individuals in the United States for allegedly laundering more than $80 million for a Southeast Asian fraud syndicate, confirming that Southeast Asian criminal gangs have now infiltrated the United States to carry out their activities.
The U.S. government also warned Americans to be wary of international human trafficking syndicates to avoid being trafficked to Southeast Asia to become "piglets" of criminal syndicates, and to use their identity as Americans to defraud Americans, because "American residents are now the primary target of cybercrime syndicates."
As Southeast Asian wire fraud syndicates focus their attention on the United States, it is expected that the criminal activities related in the United States will increase exponentially from this year, and it is unclear whether the US government will respond at that time.
But even if such crimes are taken seriously, the solutions proposed by the United States or most other countries are weak, such as the one proposed in the report, which includes imposing sanctions and travel bans on the leaders of criminal groups, holding countries where they host for condoning fraud, and cracking down on social platforms and messaging software (such as Telegram) that allow fraud groups to exist.
Obviously, the effect of these tricks is very limited, and it is difficult to say that the wire fraud groups in other regions have a solution, but the wire fraud groups in Southeast Asia have only the mainland in the world to have a solution. If the United States is also tormented by wire fraud one day, I wonder if this will become another card in the game between China and the United States.