MYANMAR police arrested 95 people during raids this week on an online scam operation in the commercial hub of Yangon, authorities said.

The country has been in chaos since a military coup in February 2021, with criminal syndicates taking advantage of the lawlessness to run scam centres, particularly in border regions.

Authorities arrested 95 people at three addresses in Yangon on Thursday – most of them locals, though some were from unspecified foreign countries.

Police seized a BMW car, laptops, phones, desktop computers and other equipment in the raids, according to a Myanmar junta statement.

“On the computers were data from people outside the country, used for scamming money online,” it said.

Officers also raided the home of the suspected ringleader of the operation, but he remains at large, the statement said.

The raids mark the first time the junta has announced mass arrests for scams in Yangon.

Previous arrests had centred on the northern border with China.

Myanmar is under pressure from key ally Beijing to root out the scam centres, which often target Chinese citizens.

Criminal gangs are said to have lured, kidnapped or coerced thousands of Chinese nationals and locals into forced labour in online scam operations based in Southeast Asia.

The scammers typically groom their victims for weeks before convincing them to hand over money for fake investments and other ruses, analysts say.

People trafficking connected to casinos and scam operations run by organised crime “has mushroomed across Southeast Asia, particularly in the Mekong”, and profits are at unprecedented levels, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

The scam industry is earning criminal groups the equivalent of billions of US dollars, with profits rivalling the GDP of some countries in the region, the agency said in a report last month.

Victims have reported travelling to Myanmar, Cambodia, Thailand and Laos on false promises of romance or high-paying jobs only to be detained and forced to scam people. – AFP, October 28, 2023.