Cybercam Gang: Taiwanese man seriously injured after falling from building while running away from drugged kidnapper in Thailand
Tsai Shuyuan, Jason Pan / Staff Reporter
The Global Anti-Fraud Organization (GASO) is urging people to be cautious when traveling to Southeast Asia after a Taiwanese tourist was drugged and kidnapped by cyber fraudsters.
GASO announced on Friday that a Taiwanese man in his 20s was seriously injured when he fell from a building while fleeing from his kidnappers.
According to a GASO video recording, the man was traveling alone in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and went to a bar, but said he couldn’t remember what happened afterwards, adding that someone must have spiked his drink. Ta.
Photo courtesy of Global Anti-Scam Organization
When he woke up, he said he was in a car heading across the border from Chiang Mai to Myanmar’s Kokan region in Shan state.
The men who were escorting him were said to be wearing military uniforms and carrying firearms.
He said he was taken to a secure compound in Kokang, on the border with China’s Yunnan province, and detained by cyber fraudsters.
He said he spent a month training in investment fraud and learned how to speak like a businessman, luring people with promises of making money.
One day, when the boss went out, dozens of prisoners had a chance to escape. They reportedly pried open a ventilation duct, tied sheets together to make a rope, and threw it out a seventh-floor window.
The man went first, but was unable to hold on and fell about five stories, but his fellow prisoners escaped from the compound with him and took him for treatment.
He suffered injuries including a broken leg and several fractured vertebrae.
He said he bribed a hospital security guard and called his mother in Taiwan, who then contacted GASO.
Local media reported on his incident, and Taiwanese businessmen living in Myanmar came to his aid.
The man said he had to pay a total of NT$300,000 (US$9,435) before returning home, and his medical expenses amounted to NT$200,000.
He said that when people are kidnapped by a cybercriminal organization, they have to work according to their instructions or they are sold to another organization for NT$300,000 to NT$500,000, demanding ransom and organ harvesting. He said it was possible.
“I didn’t get hit because I cooperated with them and did what I was told,” he said. “Don’t go to Thailand alone. Always go with a friend.”
GASO and international authorities report that Phnom Penh, Kokang and Myawaddy in Myanmar are among the main hubs for cyber fraud, mainly run by Chinese gangs.
A GASO spokesperson named Cheng said the cyber fraud group had shifted its base of operations from Cambodia and Myawaddy to Kokang and adjacent areas of northern Thailand and Myanmar, where it “is the law unto itself.” .
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