一 | BANGKOK -- Zhang Hongliang, a former restaurant manager in central China, took various gigs in and outside China to support his family after losing his job during the COVID-19 pandemic.In March, a job offer to teach Chinese cooking at a restaurant led him into a cyber scam compound in Myanmar, where he was instead ordered to lure Chinese into giving up their savings for fake investment schemes via social media platforms.Zhang is one of tens of thousands of people, mostly but not all Chinese, who have become ensnared in cyber scam networks run by powerful Chinese criminal syndicates in Southeast Asia. Regional and Chinese authorities have netted thousands of people in a crackdown, but experts say they are failing to root out the local elites and criminal networks that are bound to keep running the schemes.When scam operations are shut down in one place they often just resurface elsewhere. The problem is an embarrassment for Beijing and is discouraging ordinary Chinese from traveling to Southeast Asia out of fear they might be duped or kidnapped and caught up in a cyber scam operation. In recent years, media reports have uncovered instances of young people being lured to places in Cambodia or Myanmar for high-paying jobs, only to be forced to work as scammers. Rescue organizations say people are regularly beaten or face physical punishments such as being forced to run laps if they don't perform well. In August, China, Thailand, Laos and Myanmar agreed to set up a joint police operations center to tackle cyber scams in the region. On Oct. 10, China’s Ministry of Public Security announced that its “Summer Operation” had successfully brought back 2,317 scam suspects from northern Myanmar to China.China calls such people suspects, though experts say most of them are victims who were forced to work for the criminals. They question how they will be treated once back in China. The schemes based in countries like Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia are run by Chinese bosses hand-in-hand with local elites. Many are based in places where China has financed big construction projects through leader Xi Jinping’s signature Belt and Road Initiative.Myanmar's border regions long have been a magnet for criminals — historically including drug producers and traffickers — because of lax law enforcement. Such places are generally under the control of ethnic minority armed groups, either opposed to or allied with Myanmar’s central government. Some also cooperate with organized crime gangs.“From the vantage point of the Chinese government, it’s a source of extreme embarrassment that you have so many of these Chinese criminals operating all across Southeast Asia,” said Jason Tower, an expert on transnational crime with the United States Institute of Peace.The syndicates also are known for “pig butchering” cons, where scammers entice individuals, often halfway across the world, to invest their money in bogus schemes after duping them into digital romances.The scammers divide their targets into two categories: Chinese and non-Chinese. They use scripts, images of models and influencers and translation software to trick the people they contact by phone or online into parting with their money. Victims can be anywhere in the world.The criminals have “ridden on the shoulders of the Belt and Road Initiative,” said Tower, who outlined links between the criminals and Chinese state enterprises, think tanks and government officials in a 2020 report written for the United States Institute of Peace.Zhang was working in Thailand and on a visa run to Laos when he met the man who lured him to the scam compound in Myanmar. Giving what he said was his last name, Gao, he claimed to be a broker and travel agent for Chinese living in Thailand. Zhang and his wife wanted extra money to pay for in vitro fertilization to have another child. Gao suggested he go work in Myawaddy, in eastern Myanmar’s Kayin state, teaching a local chef how to cook Chinese dishes in Gao’s new restaurant. The pay would be double what Zhang made in China.Zhang was wary. Since a 2021 coup, military-controlled Myanmar has been embroiled in civil conflict. But Gao reassured him that he wouldn’t be doing anything illegal and said the restaurant would have plenty of customers since many cyber scam businesses were operating in the area.That might have raised a red flag but it was only once he got to Myanmar that Zhang realized his predicament. He asked to go back home, saying there was a family emergency. His family helped him scrape together some 40,000 yuan ($5,472) to pay off the debt Gao claimed he owed him, and he slipped away one night, swimming across the Moei River into Thailand, where he turned himself in to Thai police, who contacted the Chinese Embassy.Zhang showed the AP copies of his deportation notice from the Thai Immigration police and a temporary ID card. He returned to China in late June and was questioned by Chinese police but not detained. He has been sharing his story on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, to alert others to the risks and says people often contact him about relatives trapped in cyber scam compounds.“We all went out with this wonderful sense of hope, but then reality slammed us in the face,” he said.In total, China has detained some 4,000 suspects and returned them back to China. The Ministry of Public Security has claimed “breakthrough results” through operations in coordination with Myanmar authorities. On Monday, they announced they had repatriated another 2,349 people. The ministry did not respond to a faxed request for comment.One 31-year old former chef who was smuggled into Myanmar’s Wa State earlier this year said he saw his company hand over four people to Chinese police with little fanfare in September. Other companies did the same, said the man, who was smuggled into Myanmar and later rescued by a non-profit organization. He declined to be named out of fear of government retribution, and The Associated Press could not independently verify his account.Overall, the enforcement actions don’t seem very comprehensive, experts say. The groups now based in Myanmar originally were located in Cambodia. When Cambodia cracked down on online gambling rings and illegal casinos in 2019, many of the groups just moved to less well policed places in Myanmar. Some were taken over by rival gangs.China's efforts to repair its image have so far not made much headway, said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a professor of political science at Thailand’s Chulalongkorn University. “You can crack down on these symptoms and the manifestations … that you can see in the borderland areas," he said, "but they’ll come back unless you really have a sustained effort." -—-AP researcher Wanqing Chen in Beijing and AP writers Grant Peck and Jintamas Saksornchai in Bangkok contributed to this report.。 一名24岁的青年法扎（化名），因犯下严重性罪案及洗钱等罪行，于8月23日在高庭被判处九年又八个月的监禁。法扎在得到有条件释放并受监督期间，剪断身上的电子追踪器，与友人轮奸一名13岁少女，并涉嫌洗钱。法扎此前因强奸罪被判入青年改造所服刑，2021年9月获得有条件释放，须佩戴电子追踪器接受监督。然而，他为了追求所谓的“自由生活”，于2022年4月剪断追踪器，导致监督官无法联系到他。在同年7月，法扎与弟弟和一名16岁的朋友通过网上聊天平台结识了一名13岁少女，并在游说下将她带到朋友的住处，随后发生了轮奸事件。少女在案发后立即报警，警方随即展开调查。（图:来源自网络） 调查过程中，警方还发现法扎的银行户头在6月份接收了多笔可疑款项，总计达到75203元，怀疑与犯罪活动有关。高庭法官迪达星吉尔在判决时指出，尽管法扎被诊断为轻微智障，但这并不影响他对自己行为的认知与自制能力。考虑到这一点，法官决定不对法扎执行鞭刑。法扎一共面对七项控状，包括强奸14岁以下少女、洗钱和恶作剧等罪状。他的同党早前已被治罪。心理卫生学院的报告证实，法扎有能力了解和控制自己的行为，并知道性行为需要对方同意。在法庭上，法扎通过代表律师求情，声称他并不知道受害少女的实际年龄。然而，这一辩解并未影响法庭的判决。
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