This is a very interesting article about "Where Scams Come From" from the N Y Times.
Travel is not mentioned but from my independent research, I believe that many travel scams do come from Myanmar or other Southeast Asian Countries.
For those who do not know I was bilked out of $759 when rebooking a flight with American Airlines although I was able to recover $450.00. Got a fake aa.com website.
It piqued my interest in learning more about scammers.
Where scams come from
Deep in the densely forested borderlands of war-torn Myanmar, two of our journalists recently visited Shunda Park, an office center that opened for business in 2024 with more than 3,500 workers from nearly 30 nations. Some were there willingly, some had been kidnapped. All were dedicated to the causes of online chicanery and digital scams.
The park was largely abandoned, having been captured and closed by one of the rebel militias that has been fighting the Myanmar military for years. But the militia allowed Hannah Beech, a reporter who covers Asia, and Jes Aznar, a photographer, to document what Hannah called “the inner sanctum of this secretive, highly fortified industry.” They were able to meet some of the scammers as well — some of whom were trying to return to their home countries, and others who were looking for another gig in the grift economy.
What they saw was amazing, just one of Southeast Asia’s compounds of cyberfraud, an enterprise that took at least $10 billion out of the United States alone in 2024.
A large room holds rows of tables with computer screens and debris scattered across the floor.
Jes Aznar for The New York Times
There were huge open-plan work rooms filled with computer monitors, the walls adorned with inspirational, always-be-closing sale slogans: “Keep going,” “Dream chaser,” “Making money matters the most.” Videoconference suites were decorated with (fake) business books and (fake) modern art meant to evoke the boardroom of a successful business concern.
Here were photographs the scammers used to help establish false identities. There were a trio of porta-potty-style boxes that scammers told Hannah were used as punishment chambers, in plain view of the rest of the room. Everywhere were discarded cellphones. “In some buildings, with nearly every step I took,” Hannah wrote, “I crunched on SIM cards, scattered like snow in the tropical heat.”
A Sisyphean loop
Who ran this place? A Chinese transnational crime network — in other words, a gang. The militia doesn’t have the resources to investigate, and no one else has expressed much interest either.
Whoever it was ran the business with brutal efficiency. Hannah spoke with several scammers whose bodies bore scars from beatings or tight shackles. They weren’t paid for their 12-hour shifts. Hannah wrote about that beautifully, tragically: “Life was a Sisyphean loop: sleep, eat, scam, eat, sleep, scam.”
One told her his job for more than a year was to send “hellos” to social media accounts. If he didn’t receive responses to at least 5 percent of his greetings, he said, he would be punished physically.
The workers came from all over the world: Namibia, Russia, Zimbabwe, Malaysia, France. Some Chinese scammers were paid, Hannah discovered, though often not what they’d been promised.