Americans Are Top Targets of China-Linked Asian Scam Centers: Report

Americans have become top targets of China-linked scam syndicates in Southeast Asia as Beijing’s selective crackdowns pushed criminals to target more U.S. victims, according to a congressional report published this month.

While China reported a 30 percent decrease in money lost to online scams in 2024, the United States’ loss increased by 42 percent, the U.S.—China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) said on July 18.

In one example, the report described how an 82-year-old Virginia man named Dennis befriended a “woman” named “Jessie” on Facebook. After months of chatting,  “Jessie” disappeared, along with Dennis’s life savings, right after Dennis was persuaded to invest the money in cryptocurrency. Dennis took his own life.

Dennis’s story is a typical “pig butchering” scam, in which a scammer builds a personal relationship with a victim, called “fattening the pig,” before convincing them to invest in fake schemes, or “slaughtering the pig.”

The USCC said the scam centers have “exploded into a massive criminal industry that rivals the global drug trade—including the fentanyl market—in scale and sophistication.” According to the report, in 2023, scam centers in Burma, Cambodia, and Laos produced around $43.8 billion in revenue, about 40 percent of the countries’ combined GDP.

“The Chinese criminals behind scam centers have built ties—some overt, some deniable—to the Chinese government by embracing patriotic rhetoric, supporting China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and promoting pro-Beijing propaganda overseas.

“As a result, Chinese crime syndicates have expanded across Southeast Asia with, at a minimum, implicit backing from elements of the Chinese government,” the report says.

It cited an example of how Chinese kingpins, She Zhijiang and Wan Kuok-Koi, known as “Broken Tooth,” reinvented themselves as champions of the Chinese Communist Party’s initiatives, so they could use the connections to gain support and resources, and avoid government crackdowns.

Earlier this year, Beijing launched a new wave of crackdowns on scam centers after the disappearance of Chinese actor Wang Xing gained massive traction in the media.

Wang, who had small parts in the film “Ip Man 3” and the television series “The Tale of Rose,” went missing after being tricked into traveling to Thailand on the pretext of doing some filming.

After his girlfriend turned to social media to publicize the disappearance, authorities became involved, and Wang was rescued from a scam center across the border in Burma, where he had already undergone training in how to conduct scam phone calls.

The USCC said Beijing’s crackdowns have been selective, focusing on centers that target Chinese victims.

This led to “Chinese criminal organizations to conclude that they can make greater profits with lower risk by targeting citizens of wealthy countries such as the United States,” the report said.

It also said that the Chinese regime has used the problem as leverage to expand its influence in Southeast Asia.