Meta said on Nov. 21 that it has removed more than two million accounts this year linked to centers involved in scams, including so-called pig-butchering schemes and other malicious operations.
The scam centers were found to be operating from Laos, Burma (also known as Myanmar), Cambodia, the United Arab Emirates, and the Philippines, with the schemes targeting people globally, the tech giant stated in a blog post.
“For over two years, our teams have been focused on investigating and disrupting the activities of the criminal scam centers in Southeast Asia,” Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, stated. “At the outset, we actively engaged with expert NGOs and law enforcement partners in the US and Southeast Asia to better understand the modus operandi of these criminal groups, including in places like Sihanoukville in Cambodia, which is reported to be a hotbed for Chinese organized crime-linked scams.”…