Trapped inside a Myanmar labour camp running online scams

The group ended up in Myawaddy – a town at the centre of recent fighting between the military regime which seized power three years ago, and allied anti-coup forces.

From there, they found themselves in a camp run by Chinese-speaking gangmasters, surrounded by tall walls and barbed wires, with armed guards protecting the entrance around the clock.

“We were terrified. About 40 young men and women, including Sri Lankans, individuals from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and African countries, were forcibly detained in the camp,” he said.

While scam centres have popped up across South East Asia, they have been particularly prevalent in Myanmar, where they have generated billions of dollars for both Chinese underworld crime syndicates, and the various armed groups operating in border towns.

In this particular scam centre, the focus was so-called romance scams. The cost of such scams to victims is hard to establish, but the FBI found in its 2023 Internet Crime Report that there had been more than 17,000 complaints of confidence or romance scams in the US, with losses totalling $652m.

According to Ravi, he and the others were forced to work up to 22 hours a day – getting only one day off each month – and told to target wealthy men, particularly in Western countries, by building romantic relationships using stolen phone numbers, social media and messaging platforms.

They contacted the victims directly, typically making them believe the first message – often just a simple “hi” – was sent by mistake.

Some people ignored the messages, Ravi says, but lonely people or those looking for sex often took the bait.

When they did, a group of young women at the camp were forced to take explicit pictures to further entice the target.