The French newspaper Le Monde recently published a long investigative article, revealing how the Chinese mafia entrenched in the border areas of Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia illegally imprisoned Africans and used them to conduct large-scale online fraud, specifically targeting Western countries. As online fraud activities become increasingly rampant, more and more Africans are being used by these criminal groups and become tools in their scams.

Kenyan girl's trap: from dream to nightmare

The story of Bridget Motari, a 22-year-old Kenyan girl, reveals the terrible truth of these traps. Motari originally studied at a hotel management school in western Kenya and dreamed of improving her life through a high-paying overseas job. In early 2022, an acquaintance told her that there was a customer service position in Thailand with a monthly salary of up to 900 euros, far more than she could earn in Kenya. Although she was a little skeptical about the recruitment agency, the attractive salary made her decide to seize the opportunity. As a result, this decision completely changed her destiny.

When Motari arrived in Bangkok in July 2022, she found no job and no salary. Instead, she fell into a trap of a Chinese underworld. Next, she experienced a nightmare life for four months - she was illegally transferred to the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone in Laos and became a prisoner in a huge online fraud center in the region.

Rampant online fraud center

The vast area where Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia meet was once a distribution center for global opium trafficking, but since the outbreak of the new crown epidemic, the region has rapidly developed into a hotbed of cybercrime. Here, the Burmese civil war and the collusion of local elites have left the region in a state of almost legal vacuum, and Chinese triads and other criminal groups have rapidly expanded their influence here. Well-known criminal figures Wan Kuok-koi and Cambodian tycoon and former Prime Minister Hun Sen's adviser Ly Yong Phat are both believed to be closely linked to these online fraud activities.

A major method of these scams is called "pig butchering," in which criminals lure victims through social networks, weave emotional or investment scams, and ultimately squeeze huge sums of money from them through virtual currency platforms. According to a research report from the University of Texas, the illegal proceeds of such scams have reached $75 billion since 2020.

Africans have become tools for online fraud

Motari's task is to lure Western men, especially American men, into their scams through the Internet. She was forced to use computers and mobile phones to create fake accounts on major social media platforms during her 15-hour workday, making up various fictitious life stories, including false careers, childhoods, and emotional experiences, in order to make the target men fall in love and lure them into "investing" through virtual currency. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) estimates that this type of fraud has caused tens of thousands of American netizens to lose nearly $4 billion in 2023.

Motari recalled that she originally thought she would work for an e-commerce company, but was taken to an online fraud center in Laos by a man. At the time, she did not realize that she was in a foreign country. In these buildings surrounded by high walls and barbed wire, she and other victims were illegally imprisoned, their passports and communication tools were confiscated, and escape was almost impossible. The only way to get free from this "hell on earth" is to complete the fraud goals set by the criminal group to repay the so-called "debt", or like a very small number of Africans, raise enough money to pay the ransom.

The transnational scale of cyber fraud activities and the plight of victims

According to estimates by the United States Institute of Peace, cybercrime groups in the border area of Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia may have imprisoned up to 305,000 people, most of whom are laborers from Asia. In recent years, Africans have begun to become new targets of these criminal groups. Thai immigration officials revealed that almost every time they saw Africans arriving at Bangkok Airport, they knew that these people were likely to be transferred to fraud centers controlled by the underworld.

Behind these illegal activities is a deep-seated global cybercrime system. Through online deception, emotional manipulation and the widespread use of cryptocurrency, criminal groups are able to grab huge wealth from victims around the world. Africans have become key laborers exploited in these mafia activities, forced to participate in fraud activities and in extremely miserable situations.

From the opium trade to cyber fraud: the historical continuity of criminal activities

The "Golden Triangle" region between Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia was once an important hub for the global drug trade. With the outbreak of the new crown epidemic, criminal activities in this region began to turn to cyber fraud. Internal conflicts in the region and the collusion between local politicians and the underworld have made these criminal groups almost unrestrained by the law, and fraud activities have flourished here.

Chinese organized crime groups are linked to local criminal gangs, jointly promoting the global expansion of such cyber fraud. Many fraud centers disguised as regular companies are actually engaged in large-scale cybercrime activities. These criminal networks not only affect Asian countries, but also spread to the world, especially targeting Western countries.

Challenges of international cooperation to combat cyber fraud

Despite the growing problem of cyber fraud, the international community's crackdown on it still faces many challenges. The transnational nature of such fraud activities, the anonymous nature of cryptocurrencies and the concealment of criminal gangs make law enforcement operations complicated. At the same time, the number of victims is still increasing, and Africans and Asians have become the main victims of these crimes.

Although many countries have begun to strengthen their crackdown on cyber fraud, the true destruction of these transnational criminal networks still requires closer cooperation from the international community. Only through severe legal sanctions, strengthened international cooperation and supervision can such criminal activities be effectively combated and innocent victims around the world be protected.

The phenomenon of Chinese mafia illegally imprisoning Africans in Southeast Asia to carry out cyber fraud reveals the severity of global cyber crime activities. The victims include not only young African workers, but also tens of thousands of Internet users in Western countries around the world. Cyber fraud is becoming a transnational organized crime, and there are huge illegal economic interests behind it. In the future, countries around the world must strengthen cooperation and take more effective measures to combat this increasingly rampant criminal activity and protect the rights and safety of victims.