I Was Trafficked to Myanmar to Work as a Phone Scammer
Issue 61
Greetings from Chinarrative and Happy New Year!
This issue tells the story of a man named Lin who was held hostage in Myanmar after becoming embroiled in an illegal telecom scam.
The 22-year-old was kidnapped and taken to the northern part of the country, formerly known as Burma, by an illicit organization operating out of the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou.
In Myanmar, he was deprived of his freedom and compelled to participate in phone fraud—forced to make calls all over the world to swindle people.
Lin’s experience is a microcosm of the telecom fraud crime rampant in Southeast Asia, which has increasingly involved China and Chinese people.
In addition to financial harm, some of the hostages are physically hurt or even die.
Scammers usually offer chances for a job or travel to lure people to Southeast Asia.
Lin was abducted in May. Through the intervention of multiple parties, his freedom was eventually secured after incurring costs of 450,000 yuan (around $63,000).
The interview with Lin was first published by Chinese media outlet Jiemian and is translated here with permission from the authors.
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I Was Trafficked to Myanmar to Work as a Phone Scammer
By Zhao Meng and Yang Jingtong
I was kidnapped and taken to northern Myanmar on May 22 and made it back to China in the second half of June, spending over a month there.
The time I spent in Myanmar was not very long, but it was enough to be etched in my mind for the rest of my life.
I am 22 years old. School work didn’t attract me much, so I decided to drop out of college in my freshman year.
Initially, I saw a job-recruitment advertisement on the internet about a well-paid job. I think it had something to do with foreign trade. The pay was about a couple thousand dollars per month.
The advertisement said I should visit Xishuangbanna—a town in southwestern China’s Yunnan province—to interview for the post.
“You can check if the job is suitable for you or not,” said the man who liaised with me. “If not, you can just leave.”
I thought it would just take two days to go down there. And if the job was not suitable for me, I could just come back.
Now that I think about this experience, I feel like I was being too naive.
The recruiters bought me a high-speed train ticket from Guangzhou to Xishuangbanna.
I thought I could still take this chance for a tour down to Yunnan if this job opportunity didn’t work out, given that I have never visited the province.
Before this, I had never heard of any news about telecom scams, so I never knew how prevalent telecom scams were in northern Myanmar. Young people need to be more alert to identify scams.
As soon as I got off the high-speed train, I waited at a shopping mall in the city of Xishuangbanna, where they agreed to pick me up. It was already around 9 or 10 p.m.
They called me and told me to wait by the side of the road because people were on the way to get me.
A black car drove by and stopped by the road. I found that the vehicle did not have license plates. At that very moment, my phone rang, and the other party told me the car was there to pick me up.
There were four people inside, including a very slim driver and a brawny man seated in the front passenger seat. On the trip, I brought myself to ask them, “Where are we headed to?”
They didn’t take my questions and never really talked to me. I dared not keep asking, and the car just kept going.
After several hours, the man who was next to me and I were dragged to the foot of a mountain with two men with knives accompanying us.
They asked us to follow them along the trail uphill. The two held flashlights, one in front of us and one behind us. Like this, we hiked over a mountain.
In the moonlight, I saw barbed wire. I suspect this may have been the border.
Underneath, there was a cement tunnel that seemed to work as some sort of drain. It was just enough to hold one person. One guy crawled in and went across first, and we followed. The other guy with the knife followed us.
Two men on motorbikes were waiting for us. They were both wearing some kind of green-colored military uniform.
The guys with the knives started talking to them in not-very-fluent Mandarin. They didn’t sound like native speakers.
They handed over our belongings that they had confiscated to the men in uniform and received a stack of Chinese yuan.
I saw, with my own eyes, the two guys counting the cash.
My fellow hostage and I were forced onto the motorbikes, one on each.
There was no one on the way downhill. There were not even any villages. Shortly after we set out, I mustered up the courage to say I didn’t want to go on anymore and asked to get off the bike.
The motorcycle stopped the engine and asked me what I said. I got off. “I don’t want to go anymore,” I said. “Let me go.”
Then I turned back and started walking along the trail.
One man yelled at me, “You will have to come with me today! Otherwise, you can try your luck.”
I turned back and found that he was holding a gun at me. I dared not say anything and walked back to the motorcycle.
The motorbike rode on a muddy trail before we arrived at a village.
They brought us to a motel and told us to rest. Our room held six or seven people like us who were also tricked to come here.
A guy who took us to get food was also armed with a gun.
I had never seen a gun in my whole life. I didn’t know if there were bullets in it. Neither did I know how to use a weapon. Anyway, there was no one trying to take or steal the gun.
After a couple of hours’ rest, it was already midday, and another group of people came to pick us up. I saw the two parties paying and receiving both in cash.
We were all dragged into the car. After several rounds of transfers, we finally arrived in northern Myanmar on the afternoon of the third day. There were no trades in the last round of transfers. I did not see them paying cash.
On the way to the destination, the people guarding us went out for phone calls. I told two people next to me, “We might have been human-trafficked. We should find a chance to run away.”
After we continued the journey, the two people I talked to got into different cars, and we have been separated ever since.
I realized that there was no chance to escape. “I’ll find a way to run after getting there,” I told myself.
Don’t Try to Run
The final destination was a little courtyard. There were two people armed with AK rifles guarding the gate.
When I walked into the yard, I saw about 20 more “soldiers” armed with AK weapons inside. Along with me, there were about 30 or 40 other people who had also been kidnapped.
They were all males in their 20s or 30s. Some of them also looked as if they were 17 or 18 years old.
The kidnappers gave our phones back to us and asked us to trick more family and friends to join us.
I realized my SIM card had been removed after getting my phone back. A sticky tag covered the camera, and the phone had been connected to WiFi.
The “soldiers” were just on guard there, warning us in Chinese, “Don’t even think about deleting any chat history. We can recover that, and you will be miserable if we find out you have done something.”
All the captives started “working” as soon as they got their phones back. There were no “soldiers” standing next to us while we were “working.”
This was when I realized I had logged in to my girlfriend’s QQ messaging account.
So, I secretly logged on to that account and sent a message to her contacts that I was kidnapped and sold to northern Myanmar.
I tried to send my geo-location via map, only to find later that my girlfriend could not see the specific address from China—it was all blank, and there was no clear location.
The situation was pressing, and I could not wait for her response. I had to log out immediately and delete all the logging information. I could only wish she had read the messages and immediately reached out to my sisters and my family. There might be a chance to rescue me.
Upon arrival, our kidnappers asked us to borrow money. Only by doing that could we afford to buy food and water. So, I asked my cousin for a couple hundred yuan and bought some food. I recalled that the food tasted like dog food. It was horrible.
About two hours later, in the same afternoon, I was still pretending to scam other people with my phone. Maybe it was my good acting skills that impressed those people. Someone came to me and asked, “Do you know how to type?” I said yes.
After that, they asked me to go with them, and I was brought to a new scam organization.
I thought maybe I would have a better chance of escaping now that I could move to a new place. After all, there were too many armed guards at the old place.
The new place was an “office” on the fifth floor of a hotel.
There were guards armed with AK rifles at the gate. It seemed like a regular hotel beneath the fifth floor, but we were not allowed to go downstairs.
My ID, phone charger, and watch were all taken away from me. The phone was stored away with others’ cell phones.
Since we were newcomers, we were all granted a phone call to our family to report our safety. We were allowed two calls per month.
Once I made my call, I kept the phone in my pocket and pretended to give it back afterward. One fellow hostage saw me, but he didn’t say anything.
I kept my phone with me for about a week. During that time, I kept in communication with my sister.
I put the cell phone underneath my bed in the dorm. I always contacted my sister after everyone fell asleep. In the beginning, they rarely checked the dorms.
There were several hundred people here, and we all started “working” around 8 a.m. and finished work at 11 p.m. There was an hour’s break during the day, but there were no weekends or holidays.
Food was delivered directly to our "workplace.” There was no breakfast. Three meals were provided, including a late-night meal.
The sixth floor was our office, and there were gyms and billiards on the fifth floor, which we were also allowed to access. But we could only use them for an hour after work at 11 p.m.
Our dorms were on the eighth floor. Eight people shared a dorm, and we all slept on bunk beds. I dared not run around. I never went on other floors. Iron bars enclosed all of the windows and balconies.
If you fall asleep while working, you might get an electric shock. I frequently saw it happen to other hostages—their bodies shook every time they were shocked.
I didn’t experience that, but I heard it was a bit painful and numbing. Of course, we were not allowed to talk about other stuff during work hours.
The scam organization made it clear that there was no such thing as a ransom in exchange for freedom. So, I dared not ask how much I could pay in exchange for going home.
I had no good solution for escaping and found the chances very low to run away. If I hadn’t run away, I might have spent the rest of my life here.
The kidnappers exhausted all the money we could get from any financial platforms, including Alipay, WeChat Pay, bank accounts, and other internet platforms for loaning money.
They borrowed about a couple thousand yuan under my name. Another hostage had over 20,000 yuan taken.
Scamming companies mainly taught us how to scam people, including what narratives to spin.
They provided some WeChat groups and added us to the groups. We tricked people into clicking on hyperlinks we sent in the groups. The fraudsters also created the links.
The WeChat accounts for scamming were all applied to and maintained by scamming companies and distributed to us. Each account had one persona. They were all designed so that the owners appeared to be young, rich, and handsome males. I was given two accounts to run.
One also needs to learn the skills to scam. We were required to study the materials for the scam. These materials were some thick stacks of printouts, and we had to read all of them in 20 days and remember them all.
One night, some “colleagues” ran away out of the blue. They didn’t tell me, and neither did they take me with them. They subdued the guard on the fifth floor and took his gun. They ran to the first floor, only to find five or six armed guards there.
So they went back to the second floor and jumped from the second-floor windows.
The guards did not use their guns, and those fleeing were eventually caught. Only one runner made it, and the rest were recaptured.
After this incident, a snitch reported me for having kept my phone to contact my family.
I was summoned to the courtyard and found a dozen people lying on the ground.
Two of them were connected to intravenous drips, and there was blood on the ground.
I immediately understood the situation and witnessed them being beaten up. I was afraid of being beaten myself, and my legs were shaking constantly.
I had to hand my phone to them. People from the scamming organization checked my phone and didn’t find anything. I had already deleted all the messages I sent out.
Maybe they were tied up with the other would-be escapees, and that’s why I wasn’t beaten up that day.
It was also on this occasion that I learned to be careful with people around me. Under that type of circumstance, it was hard to trust others. Maybe no one can be relied upon there.
The next day, two people wanted to use the restroom, but they couldn’t move on their own, so I was asked to carry them there.
I found that they were the two main planners of the escape, and both their legs were fractured. The other runners had bruises and marks from being beaten with a bat.
I thought I should make sure of my safety and avoid being beaten and tortured. Only in that way could I survive to go home.
$60K to Get Home
When I had access to my phone, I asked my family to report my case to the police, and they did.
After I spent around 12 days with the first scamming company, they sold me to the second company, which was not far away from the first one—about a 10-minute drive.
It was in a courtyard, with armed guards at the gate. A blue-colored iron sheet covered it. It looked like a makeshift cabin.
There were three stories, surrounded by very high walls. It must be very hard for humans to climb over. The first and second floors were dorms, and the third floor was where the office was.
There were about 40 people in this scamming company. Including me, there were eight new joiners.
The management was similar to the previous company; cellphones were all locked away, and I had no way of sneaking my device out.
This company also gave us lots of scamming materials to study. We were given designated work phones during the “work hours.”
I had been thinking of a way to escape, but there was no time to do so.
What should I do?
I had a NetEase music account, and I previously added my girlfriend as my contact on the app. I said I needed to download this app to listen to music. Through the chat function of the app, I kept in contact with my sister and knew that they were trying to rescue me.
I deleted the app as soon as I sent messages to them and re-downloaded the app the next time I needed to use it.
After “getting off work,” I talked to my “colleagues” and realized quite a few people had died there. They were buried right next to the company.
Some people had spent more than three years there. I learned that there was a woman from Wuhan who was kidnapped and brought here.
In my dorm, there were eight people. I did not know their real names, and we referred to each other by our code names.
At the Dragon Boat Festival, I was allowed to call my family. So, I called my sister.
People were watching me while I was calling her, so all I could do was report my safety to her.
Shortly after that, a representative that my sister had hired came to the scamming company. The fraudsters were a bit surprised that I would be freed after paying ransom.
That night, I was dragged out and beaten up. They pointed at my face and yelled that the reason why my family was able to find me was that I used my phone to contact my family for help. I said I did not. “Who is it if it isn’t you?”
My dorm mates were all standing there watching when I was beaten. I think they were trying to warn them and teach them a lesson.
I dared not fight back. The beater continuously struck my leg, back, and butt with a bat. He hit my nose as well. I covered my nose, but the blood had already run out, and it didn’t stop.
There was a big puddle of blood on the ground.
After a few minutes, he stopped. Maybe it was because I bled too much; I felt dizzy.
The beater realized the situation might get out of control, so he stopped. He found a doctor to check on me and prescribe me some drugs. It was after I came back home and went to the hospital that I realized my nose was fractured.
The person who hit me was called Long. He had a scar near his right eye. I can never forget his face. Long might be a code name.
No one in the company used their real name. We were all asked to give ourselves names.
For example, in the first company, I used “Jun’gu,” which is also my WeChat name. I changed to another code name in the second company.
After being beaten up, the scamming company was aware that my family would bring the ransom to save me. So, they stopped watching me. A couple of days later, in the morning when I was “working” with others, the guard came to me all of a sudden and told me that my family had come to pick me up.
I was asked to pack all my stuff. I found my phone and left after fetching my other items.
I went down from the second floor and got in their car. It was a one-hour drive, and I did not say a word.
As soon as I reached the border, they asked me to get out of the car. My sister and my dad were already waiting there.
Coming back to China, the first thing I did was give a written statement to the police.
My brother-in-law drove a whole day and night to take me home after that. I can never forget my mood at that moment. Finally, I can go home. I felt so lucky to be able to come back.
I didn’t remember many details when I arrived home. The memories gradually came back to me later. I found only after I came back that all the contact information and chat histories of the scamming organizations were deleted.
When I clicked on Douyin—the Chinese version of TikTok—I found three recruitment scams and deleted them immediately.
I was familiar with and trusted one person from Anhui province. The night I went home, he was also rescued.
There was another guy from Guangxi province—I reached out to his family after coming back home. He was rescued later. One of them was 17 and the other was 21. We have kept in touch since coming back.
I didn’t know until I came back that my family had spent so much money rescuing me.
The ransom was 280,000 yuan. The cost of transferring me and sending me back to China was not included. In total, they spent 450,000 yuan to rescue me. Some of that money was borrowed.
I am still young. Now that I have made it back, I will work to earn all the money I spent. I will get my driving license this year. And I will recover from the nose fracture as well.
Even though I had only spent one month there, it really did feel like a close brush with death.