SE Asian Scams Continue to Separate Victims from Their Money
Report and photos by Phil Pasquini

 

Washington: Anyone interested in making from 10 to 154% interest on a crypto coin investment need only respond to one of the many unsolicited now commonplace sophomoric messages of no import on their cell phone or contained in an unsolicited email. These messages designed to appeal to your curiosity can draw you into any number of scams designed to separate you from your money.

Speaking on “Pig Butchering and National Security” at the Institute of World Politics on November 20, Robin Pugh, President of DarkTower, whose company motto is “Intelligence for good,” revealed in her presentation how easy it is for people to fall victim to such cybercrime schemes. Besides cryptocurrency, love bombing, lottery, inheritance, real estate scams, bank, business email compromise (BEC), check and credit card fraud, gambling, and job offerings, these multiple fraudulent schemes are used to entice people into financial transactions with virtual strangers.

Operated by Chinese transnational gangs located across SE Asian countries in Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, and increasingly the Philippines, gangs realized an estimated income of $63 billion in 2024. That amount is slightly more than IBM’s net worth in 2023. Fraudulent crypto investment scams in 2023 alone accounted for $3.8 billion as more people moved into crypto investments relying on offers and guidance from strangers they have met online.

To operate, the gangs depend upon a steady flow of workers to meet the growing demand. Workers themselves are victims whom gangs entice through internet ads offering attractive high-paying salaries for computer work. Once a person signs up, they are flown to a receiving country where they have their passport confiscated and are driven to and housed in heavily armed guarded compounds. The remote location of the industrial-scale compounds combined with the workers' lack of documents make them virtual prisoners to the gangs operating the facilities. None of this would be possible without the assistance and cooperation of local and national officials, including national governments.

The captive workers are fully schooled in how to induce victims to invest in the various financial offerings and work 16 to 18 hours a day to meet their daily quota. Those who do not meet their quota are subject to beatings, sexual abuse, and food and sleep deprivation as punishment. Some workers have grown so despondent about their situation that they have committed suicide while others have been beaten to death.

The basic principle in inducing a victim to invest in any of the many variations of these schemes is based on developing a friendly personal relationship based on trust. Fake account statements showing huge profits in their new friend’s accounts act as bait to draw victims in. Anxious to join a high-yield investment, your newfound friend may refuse to allow you access initially for their concern that you might “lose money.” Not being able to join makes the opportunity to do so even more enticing especially when considering the large sums, one could amass in a short time due to the exceptionally high rates of return being offered. The friend, however, will soon relent and allow the victim to invest, and, after a small initial deposit, the victim is allowed to withdraw some of their profit from the escalating value of their account before they are encouraged to make additional larger investments to reap even greater returns.

In meeting their desire to invest more, the fund provides victims with a script to use when withdrawing large sums from their financial institution. Following the script as instructed allows them to circumvent the bank’s inquiry to protect and prevent their customers from being victimized by fraudulent schemes. Many victims drain their savings and retirement accounts, max out credit cards, sextortion, mortgage their homes and borrow from family and friends to increase their investment. Once they have exhausted their ability to invest more funds and request withdrawals from their accounts, they are told that to do so, they must pay all required “taxes” and “processing fees.”

When a person has reached the end of their ability to pay the requested fees to recoup their investments and is unable to raise any more money, the “pig is butchered.” “Sha Zhu Pan” or Shazhupan, is translated from Chinese as “Killing Pig Game” or fattening a victim up before absconding with their investment. Victims of the scam are left destitute and many become homeless in the process after having exhausted every possible ability they had to raise money with some so desperate that they commit suicide rather than face an uncertain future.

Never unwilling to miss an opportunity, many of the gangs recontact victims posing as “crypto recovery” services demanding $30k up front to begin the process of retrieving their stolen funds. Anyone who asks for payment in advance warns Pugh is running a scam.

Ever open to expanding their enterprise, nefarious individuals and gangs are now selling professionally produced website crypto business masks for new actors to enter the ever-growing investment scam business.

National and global security concerns come about with Americans being identified by gangs as the number one target in financing their other illicit enterprises through the massive transference of wealth. Drug manufacturing and smuggling, gun running, human trafficking, money laundering, legitimate businesses and paying off local authorities and police, in turn cause corruption of weak nation states in SE Asia by creating the ever-increasing likelihood of turning them into terrorist states destabilizing the entire region where they operate openly and freely. These Chinese gangs are presently operating in Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos and more recently in the Philippines.

The latest induction into their nefarious toolbox is the use of AI in targeting victims and creating deepfakes used in promoting the schemes. This adds a new dimension that companies like DarkTower must continually re-strategize encountering the ever-evolving and growing threat. The best weapon to end these types of scams is through public education, and the best advice not to fall victim is never to give personal information or money to anyone whom you have met online, if something looks too good to be true, it must be, and warning bells should go off when anyone asks for upfront fees to perform a service.

One method of eliminating such illegal online enterprises is to have legitimate crypto services assist in shutting down offshore exchanges and for ISPs that host the sites to terminate their access. But the final word is to not engage in financial dealings on the web with anyone you don’t know.

 The opinions expressed here are solely the author's.

(Phil Pasquini is a freelance journalist and photographer. His reports and photographs appear in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Countercurrents, and Nuze.ink. He is the author of Domes, Arches and Minarets: A History of Islamic-Inspired Buildings in America.)