“ABHORRENT”
Last month, the US sanctioned nine people connected to Shwe Kokko and Chinese criminal kingpin She Zhijiang, founder of the multistorey Yatai New City centre there.
Senator Maggie Hassan, the leading Democrat on the US Congressional committee, has called on Musk to block the Starlink service to the fraud factories.
“While most people have probably noticed the increasing number of scam texts, calls, and emails, they may not know that transnational criminals halfway across the world may be perpetrating these scams by using Starlink internet access,” she said.
The senator wrote to Musk in July demanding answers to 11 questions about Starlink’s role.
Former California prosecutor Erin West, who now heads the Operation Shamrock group campaigning against the centres, said: “It is abhorrent that an American company is enabling this to happen.”
While still a cybercrime prosecutor, she warned Starlink in July 2024 that the mostly Chinese crime syndicates running the centres were using its dishes, but received no reply.
Americans are among the top targets of Southeast Asia scammers, the US Treasury Department said, losing an estimated US$10 billion last year, up 66 per cent in 12 months.
Up to 120,000 people may be being “forced to carry out online scams” in the Myanmar centres, according to a UN report in 2023.
It said another 100,000 are likely being held in similar conditions in Cambodia.
