SpaceX disables thousands of Starlink devices being used by Myanmar scam centers

SpaceX has disabled over 2,500 Starlink devices being used by cyber scam syndicates operating in a lawless corner of Myanmar, the Elon Musk-led company said Wednesday.

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.

Since taking power in a 2021 coup, the military administration – which does not control all of the country – has fought a civil war against a patchwork of anti-junta and regional ethnic groups.

In February, Thailand cut electricity supplies to several areas in Myanmar that are home to the scam sites, to try and disrupt their operations.

Soon after, about 7,000 workers and victims were released from scam centers along the border and repatriated in a major operation by Thai authorities.

Between January 30 and October 19, Myanmar’s military junta said it had arrested 9,551 foreign nationals from the scam compounds, repatriating most of them.

But experts have warned that represents a tiny fraction of people trapped and working in the centers.

The military said Monday its raid on KK Park, a notorious scam compound near the country’s southeastern Myawaddy border town, uncovered more than 2,000 workers.

Footage filmed for CNN from inside KK Park in April shows paved roads lined with trees and manicured lawns, giving the image of a legitimate business district, complete with a hotel and billboards advertising gambling sites.

But a source who works in the anti-human-trafficking field told CNN the raid on KK Park has not stopped operations.

While the impact of ceasing Starlink operations “is not nothing,” there were still “many victims trapped inside” other buildings of the compound who “confirmed last night they’re still being forced to scam,” said the source.

Transnational crime expert Jason Tower said the military raid on KK Park was “more of a publicity stunt than a crackdown” and that it was “business as usual” for dozens of scam compounds still operating along the Moei River that separates Myanmar and Thailand.

“With international attention and outrage over Southeast Asia’s scamdemic rising, the Myanmar military is trying to skirt accountability for transforming the Myanmar-Thailand border lands into a hub for criminality,” said Tower, a senior expert at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC).

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations meets for a summit later this week in Malaysia, and the scourge of scam centers is likely to be a top issue on the agenda. “The military is also trying to position itself as continuing to take action on this issue,” Tower said.

A massive law enforcement operation by the US and UK that recently targeted a Cambodian criminal scam network “likely pushed China to increase pressure once again on the Myanmar military regime to take further action,” Tower added.

“It is also likely that the Myanmar military seeks to establish more direct control over some of the scam centers, as it realizes just how much illicit revenue is being brought in by this extremely lucrative form of criminal activity,” he said.

CNN has reached out to the military junta for comment.

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