US issues sanctions against Myanmar armed group over scams

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States on Wednesday imposed financial sanctions on a Myanmar militia group for supporting a cyber scam operation that targeted Americans from territory it controls.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been trafficked by criminal gangs across Southeast Asia in recent years and forced to work in scam centers, many of them located inside war-torn Myanmar.

The latest U.S. sanctions aimed at scam networks target the Democratic Karen Benevolent Army and four of its leaders, as well as entities and an individual linked to Chinese organized crime, the U.S. Treasury Department said.

“Criminal networks operating out of Burma are stealing billions of dollars from hardworking Americans through online scams,” said John Hurley, the undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, using an older name for the country.

“These same networks traffic human beings and help fuel Burma’s brutal civil war. The Administration will keep using every tool we have to go after these cybercriminals—wherever they operate—and to protect American families from their exploitation.”

(Reporting by Simon Lewis, Katharine Jackson and Bhargav Acharya; Editing by Doina Chiacu, Rod Nickel)

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