Starlink Devices Used by Myanmar Scam Centers

(CNN) : SpaceX has disabled over 2,500 Starlink devices being used by cyber scam syndicates operating in a lawless corner of Myanmar.

Despite regional authorities’ highly publicized crackdowns on the cyberfraud centers along Myanmar’s border with Thailand this year, the scamming networks have continued to proliferate in the civil war-afflicted nation.

SpaceX said it works to identify violations in all markets where Starlink operates.

“On the rare occasion we identify a violation, we take appropriate action, including working with law enforcement agencies around the world,” said Lauren Dreyer, SpaceX’s vice president of business operations for Starlink, in a post on X.

“In Myanmar, for example, SpaceX proactively identified and disabled over 2,500 Starlink Kits in the vicinity of suspected ‘scam centers’.”

Dreyer did not provide a date for when the consoles were disabled, but the announcement comes after the Myanmar military junta said it discovered 30 sets of Starlink “receivers and accessories” during a raid on one such scam compound this week.

There are about 30 sprawling, purpose-built compounds dotted along the Myanmar-Thai border that are dedicated to scamming victims, including Americans, out of billions of dollars every year, according to a recent report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

Workers in the scam centers are often lured by the promise of well-paid jobs, or trafficked, and are routinely held against their will and forced to carry out online fraud schemes in the heavily guarded compounds, where former detainees have previously told CNN beatings and torture are common.

For more than a year, concerns have been raised by the United States that criminal networks in Myanmar were using Starlink to access the internet and carry out their scams.

Starlink has more than 6 million global users, according to its website. It provides high-speed internet service using a network of thousands of satellites at low-Earth orbit, enabling it to reach remote communities.

An investigation by the news agency Agence France-Presse this month found that Starlink receivers had been installed on the roofs of the scam compounds at a “huge scale.”

The US Congress Joint Economic Committee has begun an investigation into Starlink’s alleged involvement in the centers, according to the AFP investigation.

The move by SpaceX comes as the global scam industry is growing at an unprecedented rate, according to the UN Office of Drugs and Crime, with criminal groups adopting artificial intelligence and using online cryptocurrency markets to move vast amounts of stolen money undetected.

Southeast Asia is a hotspot for these romance or investment scams known as “pig butchering,” named for the practice of fattening up prey before the slaughter. And Myanmar has become an attractive destination for the cybercrime networks, who are shielded by corruption and the military junta.

Kristalyn, from the Phillipines, said she was working in KK Park, a notorious scam compound near Myawaddy, a border town in southeast Myanmar, when the internet was cut at around noon on Wednesday.

“In the morning the Chinese boss came into our office and told us to return to our rooms,” she told CNN, requesting to use only her first name for safety reasons.

“But not long after, he came back in again and told us to just leave the place,” added Kristalyn, who said she had been working there since July.

She and around 200 other Filipinos, along with others from India, Pakistan and several African countries, were waiting near the border with Thailand and trying to cross over, she told CNN Friday.

“Some of us are staying in abandoned houses, buildings and even some are just staying on the streets trying to cross the border. We have no food here. We have no money at all.”