In 2024, Shunda Park "materialized and metastasized" almost overnight in the middle of nowhere on the Myanmar border. Unlike office parks that support companies in a wide range of businesses, Shunda - which was run by a Chinese criminal network - from the jump was built and operated for one business purpose only: running lucrative scams.
Others thought they were checking out merchandise for online sales businesses. Instead, they were hustled at gunpoint across the river that demarcates the border with Myanmar...(Source: NY Times)
However the new employees managed to arrive, they were quickly onboarded to their new employment reality.
...all had become skilled in the art of the online grift. When the scammers bilked $5,000 out of someone, they struck a Chinese gong. A $50,000 shakedown earned a celebratory pounding of a giant drum, then an offering to a Chinese deity resplendent in his golden altar.
This was not just a Nigerian prince email scam center, but a highly sophisticated enterprise that used a complex approach to suckering in victims from around the world:
Using generative intelligence and deepfake videos, as well as fraudulent businesses, websites and financial apps, the scammers at Shunda embraced the long con and reeled in people from almost every demographic.
Then last November, the park was overtaken by the Karen National Liberation Army, one of a number of different rebel groups battling the military junta that took over Myanmar a few years back and plunged the country into a brutal civil war.
Karen forces closed Shunda down, and most of the scammers had dispersed, but the Times jounalists were able to speak with some of the remaining scammers "both those who were trying to return home and others who wanted to find another job in the fraud business." (Hoping for another job in the fraud biz? Huh? Do what you know, I guess.)
The now unemployed scammers recounted receiving beatings, being shackled, not - no surprise there - getting paid. There were punishment chambers, torture cells:
Ivan, a Malaysian who once worked as a member of the ground staff at the Singapore airport, said he was chained in a crucifixion position and denied food for days.
“You think you know hell,” he said, “and it’s actually even worse.”
Who among us hasn't joked about work being a torture chamber, a gulag? And is there anyone who hasn't seen one of those galley slave cartoons? The beatings will continue until the morale improves. But, yikes, when it comes to torture chambers, this was the real deal. The unreal deal.
At Shunda, there were some actual paid employees, Chinese nationals who ran the show and lived pretty well in the Shunda compound. There were restaurants. A night club. A basketball court. Nice cars. The bosses lived in "luxury" villas. But some of the Chinese workers were also conned, paid far less than they were promised.
Despite the fact that Shunda - now destroyed in large part - is in the middle of an active war zone, with Karen forces going at it with the Myanmar military, many of the Chinese workers are reluctant to be repatriated. Their fears are reasonable enough.
The Chinese government has periodically cracked down on the scamming industry, arresting Chinese workers who are repatriated. So tense was the situation that days before our visit, some Chinese workers had tried unsuccessfully to wrestle weapons away from the Karen soldiers, according to members of the militia and other scammers who witnessed the melee.
One might think that the destruction and occupation of Shunda would give pause to the Chinese outfits that ran them. Maybe they should be looking to set up shop someplace that's not a civil war zone under active bombardment and featuring armed skirmishes. But no. Not far from Shunda, "scam centers [are] being built, Chinese red lanterns hanging from the eaves.
As one of those inspirational signs from Shunda said, “Making money matters the most.”
Guess so.
-----------------------------------------------------
Image Source: AP via NPR
No comments:
Post a Comment