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kijin 3 days ago

We've been having a similar fraud issue here in South Korea as well. These criminals call vulnerable people, impersonate bankers or government officials, and social-engineer them into trasferring money. Some even pretend to have kidnapped your child, play AI-generated voice of a sobbing kid, and demand ransom.

Fraud has always been around, but I think a few recent developments have exacerbated the problem. KYC has been relaxed a lot since Covid, so you can open a whole bunch of accounts with just an image of an ID card. Lots of elderly people now have access to mobile banking, so they don't have to visit a physical branch where a clerk can flag suspicious transfer requests.

Bank accounts in South Korea now start with a daily transfer limit of 1 million won (about $700), even lower than the 50k bhat limit that the Thai government has instituted.

walterbell 3 days ago | parent [-]

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/sep/08/m...

  KK Park – a vast, heavily guarded complex stretching for 210 hectares (520 acres) along the churning Moei River that forms Myanmar’s border with Thailand.. with its on-site hospital, restaurants, bank and neat lines of villas with manicured lawns, looks more like the campus of a Silicon Valley tech company than what it really is: the frontline of a multibillion-dollar criminal fraud industry fuelled by human trafficking and brutal violence.. Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos have in recent years become havens for transnational crime syndicates running scam centres such as KK Park, which use enslaved workers to run complex online fraud and scamming schemes that generate huge profits.
latchkey 3 days ago | parent [-]

This!

China's Silk Road ends in Sihanoukville Cambodia. If you've ever been there, you've seen the eco-devastation and utter disregard for human life along the entire road.