"It’s great to see four students return safely!" Recently, four college students in Anhui province were lured by "high salary" to cross the border during their internship, and were safely sent back after losing contact for a few days.
At the end of last year, in order to get back the customer’s payment of 170,000 yuan, Li Wei was deceived to Yunnan. As a result, the customer was kidnapped without seeing it, smuggled into Myanmar under duress and sold to a telecom fraud company.
Chen Liang, a native of Ganzhou, Jiangxi Province, was also robbed. He was attracted by the customer service recruitment advertisement of "3,000 yuan a day for 10 days" and took the initiative to sneak into Muse, Myanmar, under the temptation of "getting rich" to engage in telecom fraud. As the lucky returnees who fled from the telecom fraud company in North Myanmar, they recalled the unforgettable experience to reporters.
First arrival: "Knocking on the keyboard in handcuffs"
"All the people with guns are driving pickup trucks, and there are no traffic lights on the road." In January of this year, Li Wei, who was forced to sneak into Myanmar, saw a street scene that he had never imagined in Kokang Old Street. "At first glance, it was a company engaged in telecom fraud or an entertainment city. At that time, my mind was full." Walking into a 9-storey office building, Li Wei and another "workmate" were put into the dormitory 723 on the 7th floor, and the door was guarded by security guards 24 hours a day.
On the same day, the person in charge of the telecom fraud company left hundreds of A4-sized deceptive words as "training materials", and there was another sentence-"I want to work in 500 yuan for 10 days, but I don’t want to let my family pay a ransom of 200,000 yuan."
After a cursory reading, Li Wei saw that this was a company specializing in telecom fraud of marriage and love. Speech requires calling each other "baby", no matter whether the other party is happy or unhappy, there is a standard response. "For example, if’ Baby’ is unhappy today, she will ask for a red envelope from 520 yuan during the speech."
To Li Wei’s surprise, there are simulated scenes in the office building, which are decorated with Thai seascapes, offices and KTV boxes. Li Wei felt very ironic when he saw this scene. In the video, telecom fraudsters who claimed to be on vacation at the seaside in Thailand and singing in KTV actually couldn’t even get out of the office building.
During this period, Li Wei and his "workmates" were also taken to visit the "corporal punishment area". Li Wei recalled that the first floor of the office building was a corporal punishment area with a water dungeon and a scaffold for hanging people, and a man covered with bandages was being beaten. On the second floor is the office area. About 70 male employees are chatting with netizens at the same time, each with a computer and 15 mobile phones at his desk. Some people are injured, and some people are working in handcuffs. "The state is very depressed."
Li Wei’s experience is not a case. In Muse, northern Myanmar, there are also many telecom fraud companies, and Chen Liang is one of the former practitioners. He admits that he was not cheated innocently, but was tempted by "high salary". "I went voluntarily at first, and I felt that I had no ability and no education, so I wanted to make some money in the past."
Chen Liang sneaked into Muse and entered a telecom fraud company. The company has about 40 employees, each with five mobile phones. From 8: 00 am to 10: 00 pm, they are forced to work 14 hours a day, with only half an hour to eat, and even to go to the toilet within five minutes, and some people follow the surveillance.
Chen Liang introduced that his group was mainly for the Japanese people. They pretended to be public security personnel and told each other by phone that "the source of funds was unknown and they asked to put the money into a’ safe account’". Fraudsmen will wear Japanese police uniforms, then use AI to simulate the background of the Public Security Bureau, and make video calls with the deceived people through AI. "About one in five people will be cheated."
"The company’s daily commission is between 500,000 and 800,000 yuan, which are all divided by the managers themselves." Chen Liang found that most of the "workers" around him came for high salaries. "It is said that the daily salary is 3,000 yuan, and you will get rich in three months. In fact, you can’t get the last penny, and you may even put your life in it."
Flee: "I cried and begged not to lick my waist."
A week ago, Li Wei learned that a "workmate" who fled together was killed. The father of the "worker" received an overseas phone call, and the voice on the phone told him: "Your son hijacked our supervisor and tried to escape, but we shot him twice from behind." The old father still can’t accept the news that his son passed away. In Li Wei’s view, "workmates" are veterans with integrity, and they will definitely not commit telecom fraud after being cheated to Myanmar. "He will definitely resist to the end".
According to the interviewee, there is a saying in the industry that "it is even more impossible to escape after being beaten up in northern Myanmar", and many people use "Ga Yao Zi" to refer to the severe punishment that practitioners will face. It means that if there is no performance after going in, it will be resold to other companies, or it will be sold by "picking organs" and squeezed out of the last surplus value.
On the third day, Li Wei and his "workmates" chose to flee, which became their last time. Li Wei recalled that he and his "workmates" rolled sheets, pillowcases and Simmons into strips and tied them one by one to make a survival rope. They threw the rope out of the seventh floor window and slid down the rope. At that time, they knew nothing about the surrounding situation, and their only hope of escape was a doorway in the north fence.
"Workmate" was arrested back to the company after successfully landing, while Li Wei accidentally fell from the fifth floor and was seriously injured and unconscious. When Li Wei woke up in his hospital bed, his first reaction was to pull the doctor’s white coat and cry feebly, "Please don’t honk my waist, don’t …" After some struggle, Li Wei discovered that he was taken to the hospital for treatment, and was diagnosed with a burst fracture of lumbar vertebrae, a fracture of leg bones and ribs, and a concussion.
On January 4th, Li Wei found an opportunity to call his family for help. Since then, he has been showing signs of weakness, letting the two guards relax their vigilance. In the early morning of January 19th, Li Wei escaped from the hospital on crutches while two guards were fast asleep. After changing trains several times in the mountainous area along the China-Myanmar border, he was transported to Qingshui for home.
Compared with Li Wei’s thrilling escape, Justin Chen and his companions were luckier. They happened to be fellow villagers with the group leader. By chatting with the group leader about their hometown, they tried their best to cheat overseas netizens to make achievements, and they got a chance to go home. Chen Liang said that he worked in a fraud company for 16 days, which brought more than 200,000 yuan to the company, plus 50,000 yuan savings, all of which were handed over to the company, begging the company to let them return to China.
Finally, under the arrangement of the team leader, they were able to return to China. Chen Liang said, "If I don’t meet the leader of my fellow villagers, I only have two results. Either people are gone or I go all the way to black, which I don’t want to see." However, such luck is rare. For most people, it is difficult to escape from the telecom fraud "concentration camp" in northern Myanmar.
Chen Liang once saw with his own eyes that a "worker" lost two fingers, which was the punishment he received after fleeing and being caught back. A few days later, he witnessed the "worker" fleeing again. After being caught back, the unscrupulous manager cut off his tongue. Chen Liang said that although he came voluntarily, he just wanted to leave as soon as possible after seeing this scene. Chen Liang hopes to tell everyone with personal experience that telecom fraud companies are greedy, so be wary of such scams.
Returning to China: Anti-fraud with Personal Experience of Popular Science
"One person escapes from North Myanmar in one month", which is a summary of Li Wei’s own words. On the afternoon of March 21st, Li Wei broadcast live for 3 hours continuously. He kept telling netizens about his experience. "It is suggested that singles should not travel to Southeast Asia, and they must be vigilant when they go abroad for customer service with high salary."
Now, Li Wei’s experience of being cheated and tips to prevent telecom fraud can reach tens of thousands of netizens every day. He said that the original broadcast was only watched by dozens of people. Recently, due to the concern that "four students in Hefei, Anhui Province lost contact in Myanmar", the number of viewers in the live broadcast room suddenly jumped to 70,000 to 80,000.
In January this year, Li Wei returned to China and surrendered himself. He was fined 4,000 yuan for "the crime of stealing the border". He said that the road to return to China is actually very close, less than two hours by car, but it is full of danger and difficulties. Even the police investigating the case told Li Wei, "It’s a lot of luck to go there and get back smoothly, which is equivalent to buying lottery tickets for several times in a row.".
Like Li Wei, Cat turned himself in to Yunnan Dehong Public Security Bureau as soon as he returned home, and told the story in detail. He remembered the license plate number of the smuggling van and the self-built house that he temporarily lived in Yunnan, helped the police catch the "snakehead" and rescued 14 people who were going to smuggle.
Chen Liang said that he stood up and told the story because he hoped that everyone would know that he was familiar with this kind of scam. If there are relatives and friends around him who plan to go to Southeast Asia to do this kind of work, he should be discouraged anyway. "High-paying jobs abroad are not as good as you think."
Chen Liang suggested that installing the national anti-fraud App on the mobile phone can intercept overseas fraudulent calls. In addition, we should pay attention to protecting personal information.
(At the request of the interviewee, the characters in the text are all pseudonyms.)