(MENAFN- Asia Times) Southeast Asia–based scam operations have become a global menace. According to the US Department of the Treasury, online scam syndicates have cost American victims $16.6 billion, including $10 billion in 2024 alone.

Alarmed by this trend, both Congress and the Trump administration have begun taking visible action. Congressman Jefferson Shreve (R-IN) recently introduced the Dismantle Foreign Scam Syndicates Act, while Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) proposed the STOP Scammers Act.

On November 12, 2025, the US Attorney's Office announced the creation of the Scam Center Strike Force, bringing together major federal law enforcement agencies. The formal designation as a“strike force”-not merely a task force-signals an intent to act swiftly and decisively.

These criminal enterprises thrive across Myanmar's lawless borderlands and parts of Laos, Cambodia and the Philippines. Their roots lie in deeper structural failings: chronic poverty, weak governance, human trafficking and the collapse of the rule of law.

Most operations are run by Chinese criminal syndicates that originally built cross-border casino and online gambling empires. Over time, these evolved into highly organized scam centers. In Myanmar, the problem is worsened by alliances between corrupt ethnic armed groups and the military junta, which together protect-and profit from-these criminal hubs.

There is extensive evidence of collusion among Myanmar's military, Chinese-led crime syndicates and certain ethnic armed groups. In northern Shan State, the border towns of Laukkai and Mong La functioned as major scam enclaves under the protection of the junta-aligned Kokang Border Guard Force (BGF).

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The military's refusal to crack down on those syndicates targeting Chinese citizens eventually led Beijing to tacitly green-light the Northern Alliance's Operation 1027 in 2023. During the offensive, Myanmar's military and the Kokang Border Guard Force (BGF) suffered an overwhelming defeat. After seizing the area, the Northern Alliance, also known as the Three Brotherhood Alliance, promptly handed captured scam operators to Chinese authorities.

Among those detained was Bai Suocheng, head of the Kokang BGF, junta-appointed governor of the Kokang Self-Administered Zone and a member of the junta-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party. Many other Kokang BGF leaders-long intertwined with the military through personal and financial networks-were similarly extradited and now face severe punishment in China.

Following the collapse of northern Myanmar's scam hubs, a similar pattern has emerged in the country's south, where scam centers have proliferated across Karen and Mon states near the Thai border. The most infamous is Shwe Kokko, located across the Moei River from Thailand and controlled by the BGF led by Saw Chit Thu, a former Karen National Union commander.

The BGF openly supports the junta's planned sham elections, and in 2023, Saw Chit Thu received an honorary title from junta chief Min Aung Hlaing-further evidence of deep collusion in cybercrime and human trafficking.

It is increasingly clear that as long as Myanmar's military regime remains in power, scam centers will enjoy protection in one form or another. A telling example came in 2024, when Thai authorities cut cross-border internet links used by scam enclaves. The junta-owned Telecom International Myanmar, known as Mytel, immediately stepped in to provide replacement service.

The United States has attempted to constrain these criminal syndicates through targeted sanctions, but this approach has produced limited results. The creation of the Scam Center Strike Force is therefore both necessary and welcome.

Research shows that democratically governed states-such as the Philippines-have been far more effective at suppressing scam networks than authoritarian regimes like those that rule in Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar. Hence, it can be argued that the regime-change option, currently under consideration in Venezuela, should also be on the table if Washington hopes to dismantle the scam centers once and for all.

Myanmar already possesses the actors needed for political transformation: the Ethnic Resistance Organizations (EROs) seeking a genuine federal democracy, the People's Defense Forces opposed to military rule in their respective areas and the opposition National Unity Government comprised of coup-ousted, elected politicians.

These forces have made steady, if slow, progress in their struggle against the illegitimate junta regime that seized power in the 2021 coup after overturning the democratically elected government its preferred party resoundingly lost.

What they require now is greater US support. Congress passed the BURMA Act in 2022, authorizing the administration to take necessary measures to aid Myanmar's democratic movement.

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At the time, the scam-center crisis had not yet exploded, and the legislation did not address it directly. That omission has now prompted the aforementioned new legislative proposals. Because the BURMA Act did not explicitly consider scam centers or the national-security implications of transnational cybercrime, its restriction to“nonlethal aid” may now be reasonably viewed as outdated.

As experts on Southeast Asian security and transnational crime have repeatedly noted, scam centers operate at the intersection of human trafficking, money laundering, arms smuggling and corruption. These networks erode governance, destabilize entire regions and undermine US national interests.

In many ways, the situation mirrors the Venezuelan drug-trafficking networks that prompted recent US unilateral military action and consideration to designate these as terrorist groups. The United States did not hesitate to act when those networks posed a direct threat to American interests. Myanmar's scam centers now pose a similar one.

Effective action must target the true enablers of these enterprises: corrupt officials, criminal warlords and Myanmar's military junta writ large. Shutting down transnational scam operations will require coordinated diplomatic pressure, intelligence sharing and law-enforcement collaboration among the United States, regional governments and international partners.

These syndicates prey on people across the globe and every nation should treat this as a new global war on scammers-one in which the United States should employ every tool at its disposal, beginning with revising the outdated mandates in the BURMA Act.

Than Oo is a Myanmar analyst and democracy activist

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