Chinese police have detained a key suspect in a number of recent human trafficking cases linked to cyberscam networks along the Myanmar-Thailand border, including the kidnapping of a well-known Chinese actor earlier this month.
In a statement on Sunday, China’s Ministry of Public Security said that a “major criminal suspect” surnamed Yan was captured with the assistance of Thai law enforcement agencies and the Chinese Embassy in Thailand, Reuters reported. It added that Yan was extradited to China on Saturday and that an investigation is ongoing.
Yan was wanted in connection with the trafficking of Chinese actor Wang Xing, 22, who went missing on January 3 near Thailand’s border with Myanmar. After his girlfriend raised the alarm on social media, Wang was rescued on January 7 from a scam center in Shwe Kokko, a notorious scam hub just inside the Myanmar border.
Prior to his disappearance, Thai police said, Wang had communicated on WeChat with people he believed were Chinese employees of a major Thai entertainment firm. Upon arrival in Thailand, Wang was picked up and transported to Shwe Kokko, a known scamming hub in Myawaddy township in eastern Myanmar, where his head was shaved and he was forced to run online scams.
Wang was just one of the hundreds of thousands of people that have been tricked into running scams for Chinese organized crime syndicates across Southeast Asia, particularly in loosely regulated parts of Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar. Most of the scamming operations were established in casinos and high-rise apartment blocks during the COVID-19 pandemic, but have since grown to monstrous proportions. Liu Zhongyi, China’s assistant minister of public security, told Thai counterparts this week that there are 36 major Chinese scamming gangs “employing” more than 100,000 people.
In its Sunday statement, the Ministry also repeated its recent pledges to improve law enforcement cooperation with lower Mekong countries in a bid to eradicate the online scamming syndicates and rescue Chinese citizens that have fallen into their clutches.
The arrest comes is just the latest pledge of closer cooperation between China and the Mekong nations aimed at tackling the region’s scamming epidemic.
Last week, representatives from the six Mekong nations met in Kunming and “unanimously agreed to strengthen comprehensive cooperation, launch targeted operations, and adopt strong measures to resolutely combat telecom fraud and its derivative crimes,” according to Chinese state media reports. During the same meeting, officials from China, Thailand, and Myanmar came to a specific agreement to work together to eradicate the cyberscam centers in eastern Myanmar, including Shwe Kokko.
On Friday, China and Thailand agreed to establish a coordination center in Bangkok to “investigate and combat call center gangs based in Myawaddy, Myanmar, and along the Cambodian border,” the Thai police announced. Thai officials say that the center is expected to begin operations next month. Last week also saw a meeting in Naypyidaw between a Thai military delegation and Soe Win, the Myanmar junta’s second-in-command, which reportedly discussed crackdowns on scam centers.
