Elon Musk’s Starlink Is Keeping Modern Slavery Compounds Online
Credit to Author: Matt Burgess| Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2025 11:30:00 +0000
The plea for help arrived last summer. “I am in Myanmar and work for a fraud company,” a Chinese human-trafficking victim wrote in a short email sent from within the Tai Chang scam compound. Like thousands of others in the region, they were promised legitimate work only to find themselves tricked into modern slavery and forced to scam people online for hours every day. Tai Chang, which backs on to the Myanmar-Thailand border, has been linked to incidents of torture. “I’m not safe, I’m chatting with you secretly,” they said. Despite the risk, their first request wasn’t to be rescued.
Tai Chang’s internet connection had recently been cut off from Thailand, the person wrote in the messages to anti-scam group GASO in June 2024. Instead of scamming within the compound grinding to a halt, the organized criminals behind the operation found another way to stay online, they claimed. “Elon Musk’s Starlink is installed above all the buildings in the campus where we are now,” the individual wrote. “Now the fraud work is running normally. If the fraud network here is down, we can regain our freedom.”
Those messages soon landed on the desk of Erin West, then deputy district attorney for Santa Clara County, California. West, a longtime advocate for victims of so-called pig butchering and other types of cryptocurrency scams, wrote to a lawyer at SpaceX, the company behind Musk’s high-speed Starlink satellite internet system. Starlink connections appeared to be helping criminals at Tai Chang to “scam Americans” and “fuel their internet needs,” West alleged at the end of July 2024. She offered to share more information to help the company in “disrupting the work of bad actors.”
SpaceX and Starlink never replied, West claims.
Reports of the use of Starlink at Tai Chang are not a one-off—criminals running multibillion-dollar empires across Southeast Asia appear to be widely using the satellite internet network. At least eight scam compounds based around the Myanmar-Thailand border region are using Starlink devices, according to mobile phone connection data reviewed by WIRED. Between November 2024 and the start of February, hundreds of mobile phones logged their locations and use of Starlink at known scam compounds more than 40,000 times, according to the mobile phone data, which was collected by an online advertising industry tool.
The eight compounds, spread around the Myawaddy region of war-torn Myanmar, likely have installed multiple Starlink devices. Photos of Tai Chang reviewed by WIRED appear to show dozens of white Starlink satellite dishes on a single rooftop, while human rights watchdogs and other experts say that Starlink use at the scam compounds has increased in the past year.
“I believe that SpaceX must have the capacity to stop this problem,” says Rangsiman Rome, an opposition member of the House of Representatives in Thailand who chairs a parliamentary committee on national security and border issues. At the start of February, Rome tagged Musk in a post on X, saying criminals are “exploiting Starlink for massive fraud” at scam compounds in the region. He did not get a reply, he says.
“We know exactly where the compounds are,” Rome says. “If we can target which compound uses Starlink and collaborate with SpaceX, we can stop the compound using Starlink.”
Starlink’s policies state that SpaceX may terminate services to users if they participate in “fraudulent” activities or if a system is used in unauthorized locations. It has previously emailed users in locations it doesn’t officially offer services to and threatened to shut down accounts.
The use of Starlink comes as officials in Thailand, Myanmar, and China have recently attempted to crack down on scam compounds, freeing thousands. However, support services for trafficking victims have faced USAID funding cuts from Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. Musk’s ownership of the satellite network while serving as a federal employee has also fallen under increasing scrutiny, with reports suggesting Starlink connections could be turned off in Ukraine. Meanwhile, the US Federal Aviation Administration is reportedly expanding its use of Starklink devices.
“Our own technology is being used against us,” says West, who founded the nonprofit Operation Shamrock to take action against investment scammers. “Starlink is an American company, and it is the backbone for how these bad actors are able to access Americans.”
WIRED sent SpaceX a list of questions about the alleged use of Starlink at scam compounds, including coordinates of suspected scam compounds where phones have connected to the Starlink network. SpaceX did not respond to the request for comment.
“If SpaceX obtains knowledge that a Starlink terminal is being used by a sanctioned or unauthorized party, we investigate the claim and take actions to deactivate the terminal if confirmed,” the company has previously said.
The green, mountainous border separating Myanmar and Thailand runs for 1,500 miles. Around 200 miles of the border follows the Moei River, where dozens of compounds have replaced valley fields over the past five years. Rome, the Thai MP, says officials have identified 75 compounds across Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos, with 40 of those being in Myanmar’s Myawaddy region.
From the outside, the compounds resemble hotels or apartment blocks, but they are surrounded by high fences, watch towers, and armed guards. People have been trafficked from more than 60 countries. Around 120,000 people are likely held in scam compounds across Myanmar, according to one United Nations report from 2023, with another 100,000 captive in Cambodia. (Starlink has recently agreed to increase its availability in Cambodia, according to local reports.)
Within the compounds, which often have close links to Chinese organized crime groups and online gambling syndicates, victims are typically forced to work day and night to scam hundreds of people at a time. This includes carrying out long-running investment scams that have netted criminals up to $75 billion over the past few years. If the trafficking victims don’t comply, they are often beaten or tortured. Escape or paying a ransom is often the only way out.
Stable internet connections are crucial for the operations to be successful—from the initial targeting of potential human trafficking victims with false job postings to daily scamming and ultimately money laundering. Palm Naripthaphan, an executive adviser at Thailand’s National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC), says scam centers along the border have historically used mobile connections from cell carriers in Myanmar or Thailand. They can also connect to fiber-optic cables in Thailand or run them across the river Moei, Naripthaphan says. Increasingly, Naripthaphan believes, Starlink has played a role.
The Musk-owned satellite system is composed of multiple elements. More than 6,000 Starlink satellites orbit Earth and beam down internet connectivity to white, rectangular Starlink dishes (dubbed Dishy McFlatface). Some are portable and easy to set up, and they provide internet connections in areas where there is little or no other options, including war zones such as Ukraine.
Starlink is not officially licensed in Myanmar, which has been embroiled in a bloody civil war since a military coup in 2021, and the service has reportedly been banned by the military junta. The company’s coverage map doesn’t list any availability in the country. But this hasn’t stopped Starlink terminals working and being frequently used in Myanmar to combat frequent internet shutdowns.
“It’s really the best thing going,” says David Eubank, the founder of the Free Burma Rangers, a Christian organization that provides humanitarian aid and tracks human rights abuses in Myanmar. The group uses around 80 Starlink systems to coordinate humanitarian relief, he says, adding that any blanket ban would be harmful. “If you can find perpetrators who are misusing it, you penalize them, but you don't just shut the whole network down.”
Across eight known scam compound areas—KK Park, Tai Chang, Dongmei, Huanya, UK Compound, Gate 25, Apolo, and Shwe Kokko—mobile phones have logged thousands of occurrences of getting online using Starklink’s networks in recent months, according to data seen by WIRED. At least 412 devices listed Starlink as their internet provider at the compound locations between November and February, according to an analyst with access to location data from the online advertising industry. In total, 40,800 instances were logged.
“Last summer, when I was pulling data and I started to see Starlink pop up, I was surprised. Now I would be surprised if I pulled data for a compound and it didn’t have at least one Starlink connection pop up,” says the analyst, who was granted anonymity because they don’t have permission to talk publicly about the tools they use. At every compound they have checked, they say, they have found data indicating Starlink usage.
The analyst used an ad-tech tool, which they declined to name, to search areas around known scam compounds for records of mobile phone usage. The murky data broker industry sells highly specific data that’s collected by apps people use on their phones. The tool used by the analyst provides a phone’s IP address, physical coordinates, and the internet service provider they are using. The full results for the compounds included internet and cell providers from Thailand, Myanmar cell carriers, remote servers, and Starlink, the analyst says.
At KK Park, one of the largest and well-known scamming sites, which is shown above, at least 127 devices recorded 24,000 Starlink connections over three months. In total, 2,907 devices were active in the area, although around 800 of these did not list any particular carrier data, the analyst says.
“I am confident that everything that we’re seeing in the data is linked to scams in some way,” the analyst says, noting that the victims who are forced to run scams are often given multiple mobile phones or telephone numbers to run the scams. They say the data is a snapshot and likely an undercount of how often Starlink is used. IP addresses in the data frequently point to Malaysia, the analyst says, indicating that may be where the systems are registered.
While multiple devices can connect to a single Starlink terminal, it’s unclear how many physical Starlink receivers are at the compounds. A standard Starlink kit can cover an area of up to 297 square meters, while a smaller version covers up to 112 square meters, according to Starlink’s website. The analyst suggests that multiple Starlink systems may be used at some compounds because multiple criminal groups work from the same locations.
Photos of the Tai Chang compound—where the trafficking victim who complained about Starlink is still based—appear to show dozens of Starlink receiver dishes. Dozens of white, small objects are positioned on top of the buildings. “They just put [Starlink] on the roof, and we have the photos,” Rome, the Thai politician, alleges.
Naripthaphan, from Thailand’s NBTC regulator, says that officials have been trying to disrupt internet connections to the scam compounds—including limiting cell coverage, cutting connections, and dismantling base stations—since May 2024. “They start using [Starlink] when the mobile operators start shutting down the services across the border and we start arresting all the broadband fiber connectivities that are smuggling through the channels,” he says. “We see that increase in Starlink users when those services are being blocked.” Naripthaphan says the NBTC has been talking with SpaceX to get Starlink regulated in the country.
Over the past year, according to a United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime report published in October, officials in Thailand seized 78 Starlink receivers that are believed to have been heading for scam compounds in Myanmar. Other Starlink devices have been seized by Myanmar’s government.
At the start of February, Thailand cut internet connections, electricity, and fuel supplies to some areas around the compounds. Thousands of people have since been rescued by officials in one of the most widespread crackdowns on the compounds so far. Mechelle B Moore, the CEO of anti-trafficking nonprofit Global Alms Incorporated, says some shelters are struggling to cope with the amount of people being freed. But past efforts to disrupt scam operations by shutting off internet connections have not been effective, partly due to Starlink connectivity.
“We have not heard of any companies shutting down or suspending operations because they don’t have access to the internet,” says Moore, who adds that multiple trafficking survivors she has spoken with have mentioned their use of Starlink. “Victims will all confirm that they’re flipped over to Starlink or they use cellular dongles with SIM cards in them. When one doesn’t work, they just flick over to the other. It doesn’t stop operations at all.”
Following the start of the most recent crackdown, the analyst with access to data about Starlink use says, records show that at least six of the compounds have devices accessing Starlink.