World News

Hundreds of men and women stand in rows, divided by nationality, in the courtyard of a white-walled compound, flanked by armed guards in fatigues.

“Do you want to go home?” a voice shouts in the video obtained by CNN. They raise their hands. “Yes,” they reply in chorus.

The group were among around 7,000 people recently released from scam centers run by criminal gangs and warlords operating along Myanmar’s border with Thailand, where many are held against their will and forced to work conning ordinary people, including American citizens, out of their life savings.

Some volunteer to work in the compounds. But many others are lured by promises of well-paying jobs or other enticing opportunities, before being trafficked across the border into Myanmar to carry out fraudulent investment schemes and romance scams.

For years, the scam centers and cyber fraud compounds - many run by Chinese crime syndicates – have proliferated along the mountainous frontier, raking in billions of dollars from scams, money laundering and other illicit activities. The Chinese and Thai governments finally launched a highly publicized crackdown in February.

Those included in the releases are a fraction of an estimated 100,000 people trapped along the border.