Tak Cable Raids to Curb Myanmar Scam Hubs Could Disrupt Your Internet

Border residents in Tak woke up to an unusually quiet data stream this week. Overnight, Thai cyber investigators snipped several illicit fibre-optic cables that had been funneling bandwidth—and, authorities say, money—across the Moei River into Myanmar’s shadowy scam hubs.

Quick glance

• Two covert relay points—one house in Phop Phra and an abandoned warehouse in Mae Sot—were disabled.

• Crews from the Cyber Crime Investigation Bureau (CCIB) and the NBTC yanked out or cut cables believed to feed call-centre gangs in Shwe Kokko.

• The move leans on the decades-old Radio Communications Act 1955, a law written long before fibre broadband.

• Analysts warn of a cat-and-mouse game: as soon as one route is blocked, new trenches and conduits appear along the porous border.

Why Tak became a choke-point

For years the once-sleepy districts of Mae Sot, Phop Phra and Mae Ramat have doubled as digital back doors. Low-lying farmland lets contractors quietly plough fibre lines under riverbeds, while steep hills on the Myanmar side hide rooftop antennas. The setup is perfect for syndicates running online gambling, romance scams and deep-fake investment pitches in Shwe Kokko’s fortified compounds. By borrowing Thai bandwidth, crooks dodge Myanmar’s patchy infrastructure and surf on faster, cheaper connectivity paid for—unknowingly—by Thai ISPs.

How the cables slipped under the Moei

Investigators say the seized rolls of wire were part of a multi-strand mesh. Local fixers allegedly pulled the cable through PVC pipes buried just beneath the river silt, then spliced it into roadside trunks owned by legitimate Thai telecom operators. A small switch box inside an abandoned warehouse distributed the signal to microwave towers pointing back across the water. One tell-tale sign: data spikes of 200–300 Mbps in villages where only a handful of households live.

The wider war on call-centre gangs

Thailand, China and Myanmar have spent the past 3 years dismantling notorious enclaves such as KK Park and Shwe Kokko. The numbers remain jarring: police logged 575,507 online fraud complaints between March 2022 and mid-2024, draining more than ฿65.7 B from victims. Last year alone, Thai, Korean and Chinese suspects were rounded up in Chon Buri, Songkhla and Chiang Rai, while Myanmar deported 55,000 foreign scammers. Cutting the pipes in Tak is the latest tactic in this regional squeeze.

Legal teeth—and grey zones

Prosecutors will likely lean on sections of the Radio Communications Act that prohibit unlicensed transmission equipment, carrying penalties of up to ฿100,000 and 5 years’ jail. Yet the statute never mentions the word “internet.” Lawyers expect defence teams to argue that fixed fibre is outside the Act’s original scope. The NBTC, mindful of the loophole, has told licensed operators to audit every last metre of their border networks or risk hefty fines.

Voices from the frontier

Local farmer Phruek Sae-Lee says he rented his empty farmhouse for barely ฿3,000 a month, unaware it would host a relay node. Now he fears criminal charges. Meanwhile, shopkeepers in Mae Sot worry legitimate cross-border traders—from fabric wholesalers to pick-up truck drivers—will lose connectivity that helps them track orders and payments. Cyber-security researcher Araya Chantarat adds another layer: “When you isolate a network segment, criminals simply spin up sat-com links or 5G hotspots. Disruption buys time, not closure.”

What happens next

NBTC field teams plan follow-up sweeps in Mae Ramat and Tha Song Yang, while telecom licensees must file border-cable maps by month-end. The CCIB is cross-referencing data spikes with financial fraud reports funneled through the Anti-Online Scam Center. For residents, the message is blunt: letting a stranger run cable through your backyard could turn a quiet karst valley into the next node of a billion-baht fraud empire. Stay alert—and, if a deal sounds too good to be true, it probably travels under the river first.