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At this office park in Myanmar, scamming the world was the business

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The Shunda Park scam complex, after it was captured by a rebel militia long at odds with the Myanmar military.

The Shunda Park scam complex, after it was captured by a rebel militia long at odds with the Myanmar military.

PHOTO: JES AZNAR/NYTIMES

Hannah Beech

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– In a South-east Asian war zone, cloaked in dense rainforest, the Chinese settlement dedicated to scamming people from Kentucky to Kazakhstan grew fast on fertile ground.

Over just a few months, a sprawling office park materialised and metastasised in the chaotic borderlands of Myanmar, with cavernous rooms holding rows of computer monitors and walls decorated with inspirational work slogans: “Dream chaser”, “Keep going”, “Making money matters the most”. In videoconference suites, bookshelves stocked with fake business tomes and ersatz modern art simulated the kind of boardroom a successful crypto investor might inhabit.

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