Renowned Digital Fraud Center Linked with China-based Mafia Stormed

The Burmese junta claims it has seized among the most well-known scam facilities on the frontier with Thai territory, as it retakes key area lost in the current internal conflict.

KK Park, south of the border town of Myawaddy, has been synonymous with online fraud, money laundering and human trafficking for the past five years.

Numerous individuals were attracted to the compound with promises of well-paid positions, and then forced to manage elaborate frauds, extracting billions of currency from victims across the globe.

The armed forces, long tainted by its connections to the fraud industry, now claims it has taken the facility as it expands control around Myawaddy, the primary commercial link to Thailand.

In the past few weeks, the junta has driven back rebels in multiple areas of Myanmar, seeking to expand the quantity of locations where it can hold a proposed poll, beginning in December.

It presently doesn't control large swathes of the country, which has been divided by hostilities since a armed takeover in February 2021.

The poll has been dismissed as a fraud by opposition forces who have pledged to prevent it in territories they hold.

KK Park started with a lease agreement in the first part of 2020 to build an industrial park between the KNU (KNU), the ethnic insurgent group which dominates much of this territory, and a obscure Hong Kong listed firm, Huanya International.

Investigators think there are links between Huanya and a prominent Chinese criminal figure Wan Kuok Koi, more commonly called Broken Tooth, who has later funded additional scam facilities on the boundary.

The compound developed quickly, and is clearly noticeable from the Thailand territory of the frontier.

Those who managed to get away from it detail a brutal environment imposed on the countless people, many from African nations, who were held there, compelled to work long hours, with torture and assaults inflicted on those who did not manage to reach quotas.

A announcement by the junta's communications department said its forces had "cleared" KK Park, releasing in excess of 2,000 employees there and seizing 30 of Elon Musk's Starlink satellite terminals – commonly used by deception facilities on the Thai-Myanmar border for digital operations.

The declaration blamed what it called the "extremist" ethnic organization and civilian resistance groups, which have been opposing the military since the takeover, for unlawfully controlling the territory.

The military's assertion to have closed this infamous deception centre is very likely targeted toward its key patron, China.

Beijing has been pressing the regime and the Thailand government to increase efforts to terminate the illegal businesses operated by China-based syndicates on their border.

Previously in the year thousands of Asian laborers were extracted of scam compounds and flown on chartered planes back to China, after Thai authorities eliminated availability to energy and petroleum provisions.

But KK Park is merely one of no fewer than 30 similar compounds situated on the frontier.

The majority of these are under the guardianship of Karen armed units aligned to the regime, and many are presently active, with tens of thousands managing scams inside them.

In fact, the assistance of these paramilitary forces has been essential in assisting the armed forces drive back the KNU and additional resistance factions from area they seized over the previous 24 months.

The junta now governs nearly all of the highway linking Myawaddy to the other parts of Myanmar, a target the junta established before it organizes the initial phase of the election in December.

It has taken Lay Kay Kaw, a recent settlement created for the KNU with Asian investment in 2015, a period when there had been hopes for lasting stability in Karen State following a nationwide truce.

That constitutes a more significant blow to the KNU than the capture of KK Park, from which it obtained limited income, but where the bulk of the financial benefits ended up with pro-junta paramilitary forces.

A well-placed contact has suggested that deception work is continuing in KK Park, and that it is likely the armed forces occupied just a portion of the extensive compound.

The source also suspects Beijing is providing the Burmese armed forces lists of Chinese people it seeks removed from the deception complexes, and transported back to face trial in China, which may clarify why KK Park was attacked.