Thai authorities have reportedly busted an 'audacious' criminal gang scheme, in which hundreds of meters of fiberoptic cable were found running across the border of Thailand into Myanmar. The cable was found to be serving an online scam compound in the country, which included an illegal border casino and a suspected scam center, SCMP reports.
According to the report, officers were called to homes in Nong Lu, a village in the border province of Kanchanaburi. The province is a gateway to Myanmar's Three Pagodas Pass, which is described as "a notorious hub for cyber scammers." Police reportedly found "two ramshackle village homes" using up enough daily internet bandwidth to power an entire village. What they found at the scene of one property was a 48-core fibre optic cable with a robust covering, strung up along pylons and stretching 350 meters (1,100) feet across the border. The cable was being used to siphon bandwidth out of Thailand and into Myanmar for illicit, criminal activity.
Trairat Viriyasirikul, deputy secretary general and acting secretary general of the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission, said that the cable was using about 6 terabytes of data a day, enough to serve 300 to 400 people. Instead, the data was being illegally routed to "keep a suspected Myanmar scam compound online." Said compound reportedly contained the aforementioned illegal border casino and scam center.
An unidentified male suspect reportedly pocketed 700 baht (around $20) a day for the privilege of running through his house; the report implies he was paid by a scam gang.
The report says the somewhat bizarre criminal enterprise is part of a much larger problem in this region. Myanmar has purportedly become "the epicentre of the global scam trade," a title vacated by Cambodia in recent years. It is alleged that mainly Chinese scam bosses are running more decentralized operations in small hotels, condos, and villas, abandoning larger factory-style operations.
The Three Pagodas Pass is reportedly protected by ethnic armed militias who shelter these criminals. The report also cites NGOs that claim hundreds, if not thousands, of people operating in the region are trafficked and forced into the trade.