Pakistanis among 1,049 who fled the KK park scam Myanmar

Thailand’s Tak provincial office reported that 1,049 people crossed from Myanmar into Mae Sot district between Wednesday and Friday morning — up from 677 who had fled the KK Park scam compound by Thursday morning.

"I was sleeping when I heard loud knocking and people shouting at us in Chinese," a Thai woman told the broadcaster. "They were carrying guns," she added.

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Thailand's Immigration Bureau said most of the arrivals were Chinese men. Nationals from India, Pakistan, Vietnam, Myanmar, Thailand and more than a dozen other countries were among them, the office said in a statement.

Read: Treasure NFT: a look at the trading platform alleged to be a fraud

Earlier on Monday, Myanmar's junta claimed it raided KK Park, located just across the border from Thailand, and seized Starlink satellite internet devices, which had been used widely for the scam operations. Later on Wednesday, SpaceX claimed to have disabled more than 2,500 Starlink Internet devices in the scam centres.

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While some scammers are trafficked into the often-fortified compounds, experts say others work voluntarily, hoping to earn more in the multibillion-dollar illicit industry than they can at home. Officials have said that the arrivals would be screened to determine whether they were victims of human trafficking. Otherwise, they could be prosecuted for illegal border crossing, he said.

Read more: Scam factories

These so-called call centres have increasingly become hotbeds of cyber fraud, promising lucrative returns to unsuspecting victims while siphoning off millions into untraceable digital black holes. In most cases, the trail ends with ghost companies and empty bank accounts, leaving behind little to no trace.

The most prominent form of Scam centers use Vishing or voice phishing which has skyrocketed over the years. Every 14 seconds, a person in the United States falls victim to identity theft. As a matter of fact, 46% of the global credit card fraud happens in the US, solely through vishing. As of 2021, 59.49 million Americans lost over 29.8 Billion USD, which is expected to reach 43 Billion USD by 2026.

Also read: Rising impersonation scams threaten digital economy

Pakistan's digital and financial literacy remains critically low, making the public easy prey for well-oiled Ponzi schemes disguised under the veneer of investment opportunities. Call centres operating such scams are blatantly destabilising public trust in financial systems and destroying lives.

Earlier in July, a raid by the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency, in coordination with law enforcement, on an illegal call centre in Faisalabad arrested 149 individuals – including foreign nationals – reportedly involved in Ponzi schemes is a damning indictment of the regulatory vacuum that allows such operations to flourish in plain sight.

The scale of the problem demands a systemic response, not just episodic crackdowns. These call centres must be treated not as isolated scams but as organised crime networks. Unless authorities move swiftly to expose and prosecute the criminals behind these scams, such call centres will continue to multiply.