The Myanmar military junta continues to run extensive criminal enterprises that finance its war and atrocities, with cyber scam compounds at the center of its revenue stream. These scam centers are massive penal-colony-style compounds where trafficked workers conduct global cyber fraud operations, primarily “pig butchering” schemes that build trust with victims before stealing their life savings.
Between 2020 and 2024, victims worldwide lost roughly $75 billion to Southeast Asian cyber scams, with hundreds of thousands of trafficked individuals from multiple nationalities forced to work in compounds across Cambodia, Burma (Myanmar), and Laos.
These networks rely on U.S.-based social media, websites, and hosting services to lure Americans into cryptocurrency schemes before redirecting the funds into fake platforms and laundering the money overseas. Authorities noted that in some countries the scam industry is so large it accounts for nearly half of the national GDP, with Americans losing an estimated ten billion dollars per year.
Since the coup in 2021, Burma has become the regional epicenter of cyber scams, with more than thirty scam enclaves along the Thai border and nearly one hundred along the Chinese border. These operations are driven largely by Chinese transnational criminal networks that use front companies such as Trans Asia and Troth Star to finance, expand, and manage the compounds. Some of these same companies partnered with junta-aligned Border Guard Forces on major scam hubs such as Huanya and KK Park, both of which have repeatedly targeted American victims.
Scam centers operate openly because the Myanmar military and its Border Guard Forces protect and profit from them, allowing the compounds to avoid the airstrikes routinely inflicted on civilian and resistance areas. Multiple investigations confirm the junta’s central role in this transnational criminal ecosystem.
Phone geolocation data from 2024 shows frequent movement between Myawaddy scam compounds and government buildings in Naypyidaw, indicating a direct operational relationship between organized crime and the military regime. Junta-aligned armed groups are permitted to impose informal taxation on the scam industry in exchange for land, security, transportation, and logistical support.
Several of the most active scam sites are in Karen State, including the Tai Chang compound near Myawaddy, which sits on territory controlled by the Democratic Karen Benevolent Army. Another powerful Karen militia, the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, plays a central role in sustaining the criminal economy. The DKBA provides security for multiple compounds and has been directly involved in abusing trafficked workers forced to run the scams.
Victims report beatings, electric shocks, being hung by their arms, and other violent treatment. Scam revenue funds DKBA activities, and the group collaborates with Chinese organized crime in drug trafficking, human trafficking, arms trafficking, wildlife trafficking, and money laundering.
The flow of scam revenue strengthens the junta’s allies and prolongs the war in Burma. The United Nations estimates that at least 120,000 people are trapped inside these compounds, facing forced labor, torture, and killings for failing to meet scamming quotas. Even as resistance organizations unite against the regime, the scam industry continues to thrive because it remains one of the junta’s most lucrative and protected sources of income.
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