Hundreds of men and women stand in rows, divided by nationality, in the courtyard of a white-walled compound, flanked by armed guards in fatigues.

The group were among around 7,000 people recently released from scam centers run by criminal gangs and warlords operating along Myanmar’s border with Thailand, where many are held against their will and forced to work conning ordinary people, including American citizens, out of their life savings.

Some volunteer to work in the compounds. But many others are lured by promises of well-paying jobs or other enticing opportunities, before being trafficked across the border into Myanmar to carry out fraudulent investment schemes and romance scams.

For years, the scam centers and cyber fraud compounds – many run by Chinese crime syndicates – have proliferated along the mountainous frontier, raking in billions of dollars from scams, money laundering and other illicit activities. The Chinese and Thai governments finally launched a highly publicized crackdown in February.

Those included in the releases are a fraction of an estimated 100,000 people trapped along the border.

“Billions of dollars are being invested in these kinds of businesses,” said Kannavee Suebsang, a Thai lawmaker leading his country’s efforts to release those held in scam centers. “They [the scam syndicates] will not stop.”

The scam underworld, analysts say, is agile and professional, and is rapidly expanding cyber fraud operations through illicit online marketplaces to target new demographics of victims.

The syndicates have quickly adopted cryptocurrency and are investing in cutting-edge technological developments to move money more quickly, as well as making the scams more effective.

Crime groups are using artificial intelligence to write scamming scripts and are exploiting increasingly realistic deepfake technology to create personas, pose as a love interests, and mask their identity, voice and gender.

“Fundamentally, this is a situation the region has never faced before,” said John Wojcik, an organized crime analyst at the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime.

“It’s clear that the evolving situation is trending towards something far more dangerous than scams alone – and rolling out at an unprecedented scale if left unchecked.”

There is also evidence of Asian crime syndicates expanding into other parts of the world, with networks found in parts of Africa, South Asia, the Gulf, and the Pacific, according to the UNODC.

“These syndicates are quickly maturing into more sophisticated cyber threat actors capable of deploying malware, deepfakes and other powerful tools, fuelled by the rise of new illicit online markets and crypto-based laundering services,” said Wojick.

The scale of the problem is too vast for one government or agency to combat. Experts say a global response is needed.

Scam city

The scam compounds in Myawaddy lie in territory controlled by two Myanmar ethnic militia groups, the Karen Border Guard Force and the Democratic Karen Benevolent Army (DKBA).

One such complex is KK Park, a sprawling, purpose-built city that experts say is dedicated to online gambling and cyber fraud.

Ringed by mountains and corn fields, the huge, heavily guarded compound of multi-story buildings and telecoms towers stands just inside the country’s border with Thailand – a blot on the otherwise untouched landscape.

But in what looked like an office building, dozens of men were packed together in a whitewashed room, sitting or lying on duvets on the floor.

In a nearby courtyard, dozens more men and several women sit crouched in lines. Most wear masks to obscure their identities. Clothes and towels hang drying on overhead balconies.

The Border Guard Force militia had invited local journalists inside KK Park on a heavily restricted visit. Armed BGF soldiers carried semi-automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, as the media were escorted into a select few buildings.

The several hundred people inside are the recently released victims and workers of the scam compound, the BGF said.

“They deceived many people, from South America, from North America, from Africa and Arabic-speaking countries,” said Kannavee.

Chinese pressure

The armed groups agreed to help put a stop to illegal trafficking and scamming operations in their territories after pressure from Chinese and Thai authorities following the high-profile abduction of a Chinese actor to a scam center in Myawaddy earlier this year.

The compounds have operated for years, shielded by corruption and lawlessness that has long saturated Myanmar’s border regions. But the criminal syndicates and the armed groups hosting them have exploited four years of devastating civil war to greatly expand their business.

Since seizing power in a coup in February 2021, Myanmar’s military junta has waged a brutal war against its people. On multiple fronts, the military is fighting against resistance groups and long-established ethnic minority armed forces, which the opposition government says now control about 60% of the country.

More than $43 billion is lost to scams in Southeast Asia by regional crime groups a year — almost 40% of the combined gross domestic product of Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar, according to the US Congress-founded United States Institute of Peace.

Previous crackdowns in Myanmar meant the syndicates moved operations further into the country’s interior or to major cities such as Yangon. And traffickers involved in bringing people into the centers became more sophisticated, experts say.

Even as thousands of people are being released in Myawaddy, there’s continued illicit activity and ongoing recruitment inside.

“There is already indication of an ongoing partial displacement into other neighboring scam hubs in the region,” said UNODC’s Wojcik.

The BGF and militias are positioning themselves as helping to eradicate the scam centers in their territories, even leading press tours into the scam compounds.

But they are also accused of direct involvement in operations inside the centers and benefiting financially from them.

The BGF was one of the architects of the criminal hub in Myawaddy starting from 2016, when it rented land to Chinese syndicates, according to analysts, and business soared after the 2021 military coup.

“The Border Guard Force has shares in every single one of these projects, and that’s the mainstay of its economy. It’s drawing most of its revenue from this,” said Jason Tower, country director for Myanmar at the United States Institute of Peace.

“These armed groups have very direct relationships with the mafia,” he added. “They’re using that revenue to purchase weapons, to recruit new troops. So, it’s a very clear alignment of interests that’s there between these armed groups and the criminal syndicates.”

Thailand’s Department of Special Investigation is seeking an arrest warrant for BGF leader Saw Chit Thu – who is linked to another notorious compound, Shwe Kokko – and two of his associates, on human trafficking charges.

Police said the prosecutor’s office is reviewing the case.

Chit Thu has denied knowing about or benefiting from the scamming and trafficking operations in his territory, and said in a recent press conference that the BGF is raiding the compounds with the aim of eradicating them.

China has taken the lead in putting pressure on Thailand to stop scam operations on its border. For years, China has been the main supporter of Myanmar’s military, but the proliferation of scam operations has strained that relationship.

Analysts say Beijing could be leveraging the situation to increase its security presence in Myanmar and influence the trajectory of the civil war, which has had a destabilizing effect on its own border with Myanmar.

“It potentially could use that growing presence there to assist the Myanmar military in gaining additional intelligence on some of the movements of resistance forces in the Myanmar, Thailand borderland,” said Tower.

Myint Kyaw of the junta-controlled Myanmar information ministry said the government is “actively investigating online scams and online gambling, and is working with foreign countries, including foreign organizations, to combat them.”

While Myanmar remains fractured and in a state of civil war, without a legitimate government to negotiate with, the scam industry in Myanmar won’t be dismantled.

“As long as peace is not a reality in Myanmar,” said Kannavee. “This is the reality here along the border.”

Adding further uncertainty to efforts to eradicate the scam compounds, is that Myanmar is now struggling to respond to a massive earthquake that has devastated the country’s central Sagaing region, killing more than 2,700 people.

Fears for those left behind

Even for the about 7,000 victims and workers rounded up in the recent operations, there is little clarity on how or when many will be able to go home.

The armed groups have demanded that Thailand let the individuals cross the border so they can be repatriated, saying they don’t have food or capacity to care for them.

China, whose nationals make up the largest proportion of people caught up inside the centers, has flown several thousand of its citizens home, and last week more than 500 freed Indian nationals were repatriated.

But Thailand has struggled to process a backlog of thousands of people from more than 20 countries.

“The situation is really getting to the point where it’s almost a humanitarian crisis, and it’s a very unique crisis in so far as you have people from such a wide range of countries,” said Tower. “This is a particularly complex operation to have to manage, and it’s all happening with very little time to plan, very little time to raise resources.”

Kannavee led a successful rescue operation of 260 people in February after negotiating with the DKBA. Video from the release shows dozens of people streaming onto a small Thai-flagged ferry to cross the Moei River – the demarcation line between Thailand and Myanmar. Carrying bags and suitcases, many look relieved and happy to finally be on Thai soil. But their ordeal was not over.

“Many of them are still stuck in the temporary shelters in Thailand,” said Kannavee.

As they watch others be released, families of those still inside the centers have had to anxiously await news of their loved ones.

Chelsea’s husband left their home in the Philippines in April last year for what he was told was a tech support job in Thailand. Chelsea, who asked to use a pseudonym to protect her husband, was pregnant with their second child at the time, and the family needed the cash.

But after arriving in Bangkok, her husband was driven to the Thai border town Mae Sot, where “soldiers with guns” forced him get on a boat across the river to Myanmar, she said. Instead of tech support, Chelsea said her husband worked 17-hour days for no salary conning people out of their money online.

“I cannot sleep. I’m just thinking about how he’s been doing,” Chelsea said.

Chelsea had kept in touch with her husband via a used phone he bought from someone in the compound. But in December he suddenly stopped responding to her. Three months later, he got back in touch. He had been caught with the phone and the scam bosses threatened to sell him to another compound.

“They told him that if we catch you again having a phone, we’re going to sell you. We’re going to get your kidney or your eyes,” Chelsea said.

Her husband was in a DKBA camp, hoping to be released home. Last week, he was finally released.

One woman from China, who requested anonymity because she feared retaliation, said she believed her sibling was moved to a different compound in February.

Until her sibling was unexpectedly released in recent weeks, information had dried up for months.

“Ever since they started releasing people in February, their freedom has been monitored even more strictly, no one is allowed to chat with (each) other,” she said. “I dare not imagine how terrible it must be to be in there.”

One of the largest rounds of conscription to Russia’s military for several years is underway, as President Vladimir Putin pushes ahead with an expansion of the country’s military at a crucial moment in the war in Ukraine.

Putin signed a decree authorizing the latest phase of the country’s twice-yearly conscription effort, with the new window beginning Tuesday and running until July 15.

It will see 160,000 men between 18 and 30 join Russia’s armed forces – an increase of 10,000 on last year’s spring drive, and a rise of more than 15,000 compared to three years ago, according to Russian state media outlet TASS.

The conscription push is not new, and TASS reported that the rise is caused by Putin’s efforts to increase the size of Russia’s military as a whole; the country had 1 million military personnel three years ago, but now has around 1.5 million.

But the new push also comes at a vital crossroads in Russia’s war in Ukraine. Moscow has been relying on assistance from North Korean soldiers to push back Kyiv’s advances in the Kursk region of Russia, and has been steadily advancing on the ground in eastern Ukraine, while the US attempts to broker talks that would end the conflict.

Russian law prohibits sending conscripts drafted for mandatory service to active combat zones without proper training. While the official stance is that conscripts are not sent to Ukraine, reports have surfaced of conscripts being pressured or misled into signing contracts that result in their deployment to the front lines in Ukraine. Others found themselves under attack when Kyiv launched its surprise incursion into Russia’s Kursk region in August 2024.

Russian troops have continued sustained attacks in the Pokrovsk area of Donetsk in recent weeks, and have launched aerial assaults against Ukrainian cities, even while discussions with the US continue.

Senior Russian negotiator Kirill Dmitriev is meanwhile expected to visit Washington this week to meet with top Trump official Steve Witkoff for talks on strengthening relations between the two countries as they seek to end the war in Ukraine, according to a US official and two sources familiar with the plans.

His visit will mark the first time a senior Russian official has visited Washington, DC, for talks since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 and marks a further step in the marked warming in relations between the two countries since President Donald Trump returned to office in January.

Trump acknowledged in an interview with Newsmax last week that Russia may be “dragging their feet.”

Putin not only rejected Trump’s recent call for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine but also added conditions – including the lifting of US sanctions – for a ceasefire on fighting in the Black Sea after last week’s latest negotiations wrapped up and the moratorium had been announced by the White House.

Myanmar’s ruling military government has announced a temporary ceasefire in operations against armed opposition groups to aid recovery efforts following Friday’s devastating earthquake.

The truce will run from April 2 to April 22, state-run MRTV said on Wednesday.

More than 2,700 people have died in Myanmar following Friday’s quake, the government says. Hundreds more remain missing, meaning the death toll is expected to rise.

The country has also been embroiled in civil war for four years sparked by a bloody and economically destructive military coup, which has seen junta forces battle rebel groups across the country.

The coup and ensuing conflict has battered its health infrastructure, leaving it ill-equipped to deal with major natural disasters.

Swathes of the country lie outside the control of the military junta and are a run by a patchwork of ethnic rebels and militias, making compiling reliable information extremely difficult.

MRTV also reported Wednesday that chairman of the State Administration Council (SAC) Min Aung Hlaing will attend a regional summit in Thailand on April 3-4 to discuss the respinse to the earthquake.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

The president of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has commuted the death sentences of three Americans convicted of attempting a coup to life imprisonment, days before US government officials are due to visit the central African country.

The Americans, Marcel Malanga, Tyler Thompson Jr., and Benjamin Reuben Zalman-Polun were among 37 people handed death sentences by a military court in September following last year’s failed coup attempt led by Malanga’s father, Christian.

The putschists had targeted the country’s presidential palace and the residence of Congolese politician Vital Kamerhe in an attempt to overthrow the government in May 2024.

At least six people, including Christian Malanga, an opposition politician who livestreamed the coup attempt, were killed in a gun battle with presidential guards.

Salama said the clemency decision was not made to placate the US, with whom the DRC has sought a minerals-for-security partnership. It comes as war rages in the country’s resource-rich eastern region between government forces and a Rwanda-backed rebel group.

“We have no deal with the Americans at this stage on any American intervention,” Salama said.

The new US Senior Adviser for Africa Massad Boulos and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Corina Sanders will travel to the DRC Thursday, the State Department announced this week.

The officials aim to ”advance efforts for durable peace in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo and to promote US private sector investment in the region,” it noted. They also plan to visit neighboring Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya.

A serial rapist who was convicted of raping 10 women in the United Kingdom and China last month also attacked dozens more victims before he was arrested, police said on Wednesday.

London’s Metropolitan Police Service said that 23 women came forward with new accusations against Zhenhao Zou following an appeal to trace other potential victims of the man described by the police as a “dangerous and prolific sexual predator.”

Zou, 28, was found guilty in March of 11 counts of rape, one count of false imprisonment, three counts of voyeurism and a number of other offenses, including the possession of extreme pornographic images and the possession of a controlled drug with intent to commit a sexual offense.

Investigators said that evidence, including videos found on Zou’s devices, suggested there may be more than 50 other survivors who have not yet been identified.

Some of the women who contacted the police with new accusations against Zou are in the UK, some are in China, and some in other parts of the world, the police said on Wednesday.

Zou, who is originally from Dongguan in China, has lived in various parts of the world, including China, Belfast in Northern Ireland, and London.

The Metropolitan Police force has appealed for survivors and potential witnesses to contact officers through a secure portal.

The police and prosecutors said Zou, who also went by the name Pakho online, used WeChat and dating apps to meet other students of Chinese heritage. He would invite them for drinks, drug them and then assault them in his apartments in London and in China.

Prosecutors said many of his victims were “unconscious and rendered defenceless” by the drugs he had given them. He secretly filmed some of his attacks using a mobile device and hidden cameras, according to the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service. The police said he also took items from his victims, such as jewelry and clothing.

The police said Zou “manipulated and drugged women in order to prey on them in the most cowardly way.”

A PhD student at University College London, Zou was arrested in January 2024 after one of his victims reported him to the police.

Prosecutors said last month that the “courageous women who came forward to report Zhenhao Zou’s heinous crimes” have been “incredibly strong and brave” and that there was “no doubt” that their evidence led to his convictions.

Zou will be sentenced later this year, according to the police.

Former Costa Rican President and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Óscar Arias says he has had his visa to enter the United States revoked.

Arias, 84, said he doesn’t know why his visa was canceled but accepts that the US has the right to make such a decision.

Miguel Guillén, the secretary general of Arias’ National Liberation Party, said the former president had received an email notifying him of the move.

“I don’t know if the revoking of my visa is the product of some sort of retaliation, because I say what I think (and) write what I say,” Arias told a press conference Tuesday.

In recent weeks, Arias had posted messages on social media that were critical of US President Donald Trump and his policies.

In one post, he compared Trump to “a Roman emperor” who tells other nations what to do. In another, he accused Trump and Vice President JD Vance of insulting and threatening Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during a heated White House meeting in February.

“If someone wants to use a reprisal to silence me, well obviously they’re not going to silence me,” he said Tuesday.

Arias was Costa Rica’s president between 1986 and 1990 and again between 2006 and 2010.

He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987 for his role in negotiating an end to the Central American conflicts of the 1980s.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen is in Greenland for a three-day trip aimed at building trust and cooperation with Greenlandic officials at a time when the Trump administration is seeking control of the vast Arctic territory.

Frederiksen announced plans for her visit after US Vice President JD Vance visited a US air base in Greenland last week and accused Denmark of underinvesting in the territory.

Greenland is a mineral-rich, strategically critical island that is becoming more accessible because of climate change. Trump has said that the landmass is critical to US security. It’s geographically part of North America, but is a semiautonomous territory belonging to the Kingdom of Denmark.

After her arrival Wednesday, Frederiksen walked the streets of the capital, Nuuk, with the incoming Greenlandic leader, Jens-Frederik Nielsen. She is also to meet with the future Naalakkersuisut, the Cabinet, in a visit due to last through Friday.

“It has my deepest respect how the Greenlandic people and the Greenlandic politicians handle the great pressure that is on Greenland,” she said in government statement announcing the visit.

On the agenda are talks with Nielsen about cooperation between Greenland and Denmark.

Nielsen has said in recent days that he welcomes the visit, and that Greenland would resist any US attempt to annex the territory.

“We must listen when others talk about us. But we must not be shaken. President Trump says the United States is ‘getting Greenland.’ Let me make this clear: The U.S. is not getting that. We don’t belong to anyone else. We decide our own future,” he wrote Sunday on Facebook.

“We must not act out of fear. We must respond with peace, dignity and unity. And it is through these values that we must clearly, clearly and calmly show the American president that Greenland is ours.”

For years, the people of Greenland, with a population of about 57,000, have been working toward eventual independence from Denmark.

The Trump administration’s threats to take control of the island one way or the other, possibly even with military force, have angered many in Greenland and Denmark. The incoming government chosen in last month’s election wants to take a slower approach on the question of eventual independence.

The political group in Greenland most sympathetic to the US president, the Naleraq party that advocates a swift path toward independence, was excluded from coalition talks to form the next government.

Peter Viggo Jakobsen, associate professor at the Danish Defense Academy, said last week that the Trump administration’s aspirations for Greenland could backfire and push the more mild parties closer to Denmark.

He said that “Trump has scared most Greenlanders away from this idea about a close relationship to the United States because they don’t trust him.”