They said they had smashed them. But fraud factories in Myanmar blamed for scamming Chinese and American victims out of billions of dollars are still in business and bigger than ever, an AFP investigation can reveal.

Satellite images and AFP drone footage show frenetic building work in the heavily guarded compounds around Myawaddy on the Thailand-Myanmar border, which appear to be using Elon Musk's Starlink satellite internet service on a huge scale.

Experts say most of the centres, notorious for their romance scams and "pig butchering" investment cons, are run by Chinese-led crime syndicates working with Myanmar militias in the lawless badlands of the Golden Triangle.

China, Thailand and Myanmar pressured the militias into vowing to "eradicate" the compounds in February, releasing around 7,000 people from a brutal call centre-like system that runs on greed, human trafficking and violence.

Freed workers from Asia, Africa and elsewhere showed AFP journalists the scars and bruises of beatings they said were inflicted by their bosses.

They said they had been forced to work around the clock, trawling for victims for a plethora of phone and internet scams.

Sun, a Chinese national who was sold between several compounds, was able to give AFP a rare insider's account after being freed with Beijing's help.

But a senior Thai police official said after the crackdown began that up to 100,000 people may still toil in the compounds -- often mini cities surrounded by barbed wire fences and armed guards -- that have sprung up on the border with Myanmar since the Covid pandemic.

Satellite images show rapid construction work resuming at several compounds only weeks after the crackdown. Flocks of Starlink satellite dishes soon began to cover many scam centre roofs after Thailand cut their internet and power connections.

Nearly 80 Starlink dishes are visible on one roof alone in AFP photographs of one of the biggest compounds, KK Park.

Starlink -- which is not licensed in Myanmar -- did not have enough traffic to make it onto the list of the country's internet providers before February.

It is now consistently the biggest, topping the ranking every day from July 3 until October 1, according to data from the Asian regional internet registry, APNIC.

It first appeared at number 56 in late April.

California prosecutors officially warned Starlink in July 2024 that its satellite system was being used by the fraudsters, but received no response. Worried Thai and US politicians have also conveyed their alarm to Musk, with Senator Maggie Hassan calling on him to act.

Now the powerful US Congress Joint Economic Committee, on which she is a leading member, has told AFP it has begun an investigation into Starlink's involvement with the centres.

SpaceX, which owns Starlink, did not reply to AFP requests for comment.

Erin West, a longtime US cybercrime prosecutor who resigned last year to campaign full-time for action, said "it is abhorrent that an American company is enabling this to happen".

Americans are among the top targets of the Southeast Asian scam syndicates, the US Treasury Department said, losing an estimated $10 billion last year, up 66 percent in 12 months.

The building boom since the crackdown is "breathtaking", West said. Satellite images show what appear to be office and dormitory blocks shooting up in many of the estimated 27 scam centres in the Myawaddy cluster, strung out along a winding stretch of the Moei River, which forms the frontier with Thailand.

A whole new section of KK Park has sprung up in seven months. The security checkpoint at its main entrance has also been hugely expanded, with a new access road and roundabout added.

At least five new ferry crossings across the Moei have also appeared to supply the centres from the Thai side, satellite images show.

They include one serving Shwe Kokko, which the US Treasury calls a "notorious hub for virtual currency investment scams" under the protection of the Karen National Army, a militia affiliated with Myanmar's junta.

Last month, the US sanctioned nine people and companies........

© International Business Times