Over the weekend, we covered the rise of "wrong person" scam texts — seemingly innocent messages that evolve into full-blown crypto cons. And across the U.S., drivers are getting E-ZPass toll road scam texts in droves. Now, we have a clearer picture of where these types of scam texts are coming from.
On Monday, May 5, the U.S. Treasury Department announced sanctions against Myanmar warlord Saw Chit Thu and his two sons, accusing them of facilitating massive cyberfraud and human trafficking networks. According to the Treasury, Saw Chit Thu and his militia, the Karen National Army, oversaw multibillion-dollar crypto scam operations built on forced labor targeting Americans.
"The KNA profits from cyber scam schemes on an industrial scale by leasing land it controls to other organized crime groups, and providing support for human trafficking, smuggling, and the sale of utilities used to provide energy to scam operations," the U.S. Treasury reported.
In the Treasury's statement, the department claimed that Americans lost about $3.5 billion in 2023 to such scams.
Saw Chit Thu leads the Karen National Army, a militia based in Myanmar’s Kayin State. The army controls territory in a so-called "Special Economic Zone" near the Thai border. In this zone, the group has leased land and provided protection to transnational criminal organizations running "scam compounds" — heavily guarded facilities where trafficked workers are forced to carry out online fraud, according to U.S. Treasury officials.
The Treasury says the scam compounds primarily focus on crypto scams.
"Scammers present victims with hints of a wealthy, glamorous lifestyle and induce them to 'invest' in bogus cryptocurrency and trading platforms controlled by the scammers themselves. Victims are shown fake 'returns' on their investments and duped into investing greater and greater sums until the scammers go silent after stealing everything they can from their victims," reads a press release from the Treasury.
The sanctions will freeze any U.S.-based assets held by Saw Chit Thu or his sons and prohibit American individuals or entities from doing business with them. The U.K. and European Union had already sanctioned the group.
Additionally, the Treasury announced plans to sanction a Cambodia-based network accused of laundering money for North Korean cybercriminals. The group is also linked to pig-butchering scams and other fraud operations across Southeast Asia, per Bloomberg.
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