A day after Myanmar's junta leader visited the southeastern city of Hpa-An last week, two sources said army officers met members of a powerful local militia with a directive: they had to suppress burgeoning scam centres on the Thai-Myanmar border immediately.

Online scam operations along the frontier are part of Southeast Asian criminal networks spanning countries including Myanmar and Cambodia that generate billions of dollars every year by defrauding people across the world, often using human trafficking victims.