THE Government is treating the prevention and suppression of online scams and online gam-bling, which threaten the socioeconomic well-being of people both regionally and worldwide, as a na-tional responsibility.
It is also working closely with neighbouring countries to effectively identify, in-vestigate and take action against those involved in such activities.In this regard, acting on information that Chi-nese national Su Fu Quan, whose name appears on a list of 43 wanted suspects for whom rewards have been announced by the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) of the People’s Republic of China and the Longjing Public Security Bureau, was staying in Thakayta Township, Yan-gon Region, and engaging in online scam and gam-bling operations, joint teams comprising secu-rity personnel conducted investigations and surveil-lance.
At about 10:45 pm on 12 November, the joint teams raided rooms Nos 110, 301, 302, 306, 307, 310, 505, 509 and 510 of Golden River Residence Condo-minium, located within Aung Kaung Kyaw Hous-ing on Nawarat Street, Ward 8, Thakayta Town-ship. The condominium is
owned by Daw Myat Zin Oo from PyinOoLwin and a Chinese national, Mr Huo.A total of 106 individ-uals involved in online scams and gambling were arrested, including 48 Chi-nese men and four Chinese women, eight Vietnamese men, and 31 Myanmar men and 15 Myanmar women. The Chinese national Su Fu Quan was among those arrested.The authorities also seized 121 desktop com-puters, five laptops, one server, 190 mobile phones of various types, seven Wi-Fi devices, two routers, five Myanmar passports, two Chinese passports and four KBZ bankbooks used in the operations.
According to interro-gations, the suspects had organized five groups, namely Han Tuo, Pai Rui, A Zhan, Ta Hai, and Su Jing, to conduct online fi-nancial scams. Each group was led by a leader and a deputy leader, who oper-ated through Kaqpo and Telegram accounts.The Kaqpo accounts were used to establish member groups targeting customers residing in Chi-na, Japan, Korea and In-dia.
Communications were conducted exclusively in Chinese, and the Kaqpo application was down-loaded through Google Chrome before accounts were opened.Regarding the invest-ment-based scam, the op-eration followed several stages. First, female cus-tomer service operators approached targeted cus-tomers by sending stickers depicting women and ask-ing about their preferred age groups and marital status. Once customers selected their preferences, they were asked to provide their residential townships and locations.
They were then sent photographs and persuad-ed with offers of compan-ionship with women.In the second stage, customers were encour-aged to become members. Those who agreed were sent Alipay and WeChat Pay QR codes and asked to transfer 10 yuan. After receiving the payment, the operators provided codes to activate VIP accounts and directed customers to contact the group leaders through Kaqpo.The group leaders and deputy leaders then promised to connect customers with women for companionship and requested their personal information and occupa-tions.
Customers were subsequently added to group chats with the women and asked to pay a membership fee of 72 yuan. After confirming re-ceipt of the payment, the operators transferred 80 yuan back to the custom-ers, including an addition-al eight yuan as purported profit.In the third stage, customers were offered increasingly attractive re-turns to encourage further deposits. They were prom-ised 223 yuan for deposit-ing 201 yuan, 425 yuan for depositing 401 yuan and 662 yuan for depositing 601 yuan.
The original depos-its and purported profits were transferred back to customers to gain their trust.In the fourth stage, once customers had been persuaded to invest increeasingly large amounts of money, the operators stopped returning the funds and defrauded them. The suspects managed to swindle up to 48,000 yuan from a single customer.Regarding online shopping scams, the sus-pects had established three Telegram groups, each comprising seven members.
They primar-ily targeted individuals in Brazil and Colombia through fraudulent shop-ping websites, including www.amazonexotic.com and www.falabella.com.The scam began by offering an initial payment of 10,000 in the respective currencies of Brazil and Colombia to individuals who simply liked product advertisements posted on the websites. To receive the payment, targets were asked to provide their bank account details
through Telegram. Once the account information was obtained, the opera-tors transferred the initial payment.The targets were then invited to join Telegram groups, where they were instructed to like three additional product adver-tisements on the same websites in exchange for another payment of 13,000 in the respective currencies.
Those who completed the tasks: three ‘Likes’ were subsequent-ly promoted to VIP Tele-gram groups. They were encouraged to become members and make pur-chases, with promises of an additional 20 per cent of their purchase costs as membership benefits. The operators further prom-ised additional benefits of up to 60 per cent to per-suade them to upgrade their memberships, ulti-mately defrauding them of their membership fees.The arrested individu-als will face effective legal action under the existing laws after the necessary investigations have been completed. The seized equipment will also be dealt with in accordance with established proce-dures.
MNA/KTZH
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