6 Chinese nationals traveling to Cambodia to join online scam gangs arrested

The Quang Tri Province Border Guard Command said Monday it is temporarily detaining the six who came into Vietnam through a small border crossing near the Lao Bao International Border Gate in Huong Hoa District on the Laos border.

At the end of July border guards had caught Si Non, 19, of Se Pon, Laos, transporting a Chinese national into Vietnam illegally by motorbike for a fee of 1.5 million Kip (US$67).

Following this they tracked down and arrested Lai Jia Liang, 25, Wu Jia Bin, 27, Chen De Bin, 22, Pei Ze Zeng, 22, and Liu Yan Jun, 30.

The Chinese claimed they were introduced and guided by certain people, whom police have yet to identify, and provided transportation by a hotel owner in the Golden Triangle area to Se Pon, where they rented a motorbike for further travel.

They had been trained in high-tech scam techniques in the Golden Triangle region and intended to enter Cambodia from Vietnam to link up with criminal gangs.

The Border Guard Command will hand them over to the police for further questioning.

The Golden Triangle encompasses parts of northern Thailand, western Laos and eastern Myanmar, and is mountainous and remote, which has historically made it difficult for governments to exert control.

It is notorious for its historical and ongoing involvement in the production and trafficking of opium and heroin.

Over the past decade Cambodia has become a hotspot for online scam operations — known as “pig butchering,” a reference to grooming and “fattening” victims before scamming them — many of which are run by Chinese nationals.

They typically involve fraudulent schemes such as investment and romance scams and phishing attacks.