Sixty-one people who had been lured by call-center scammers to work in Myanmar were rescued and returned to Thailand on Thursday. The Myanmar Border Guard Force transferred them to Thai authorities at the 2nd Thai-Myanmar Bridge in Tak province, the Bangkok Post reported.
The group, rescued from the Shwe Kokko complex in Myawaddy, included 39 Chinese nationals, 13 Indians, five Indonesians, one Kazakh, one Ethiopian, one Pakistani, and one Malaysian.
Thailand’s Defense Minister Phumtham Wechayachai welcomed them before immigration officers conducted screenings.
The move comes as Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra is making an official visit to China on Wednesday to Saturday this week.
At a meeting in Beijing on Thursday, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Shinawatra discussed the need to intensify their collaboration in cybersecurity and the fight against online fraud.
On January 25, Thailand expressed its willingness to strengthen cooperation with China to dismantle the telephone scam networks proliferating along the Thai-Burmese border.
A coordination center will be set up at the Thai National Police headquarters in Bangkok, while a second Chinese center will be established in Mae Sot. These structures should be operational by the end of February, according to the Thai authorities.
Thailand recently suspended the flow electricity to three areas in Myanmar where criminal networks operate. Phumtham said the impact on Thai border communities is minimal, but the effect on Myanmar is still under evaluation. Sources in Myanmar reported that households and small businesses were impacted during the outage, but crime groups relied on generators.
The power cut, which began on Wednesday, caused a 40% drop in illicit activities such as!!!!!!! call-center scams in Shwe Kokko, according to Phumtham. The Provincial Electricity Authority estimated losses from the outage at 600 million baht annually, just 0.1% of its total revenue.
Phumtham acknowledged the potential economic losses but stated that national security remains the priority. He also addressed Myanmar’s plans to buy electricity from Laos, saying Thailand’s focus is on securing its borders and cracking down on criminal operations.
In Thailand, call-center scams have led to 557,500 criminal cases and over 86 billion baht in damages, averaging 80 million baht a day. The rescue is a step in combating cross-border crime, but challenges remain in addressing the root causes of these scams.