A bipartisan Congressional committee initiated an investigation into the alleged use of Starlink satellites to power an infamous scam operation abroad, according to The Guardian.

What's happening?

Over the past five years, "cyber scam mills" have become pervasive in Southeast Asia, including a concentration of facilities on the border of Thailand and Myanmar.

An April 2024 BBC report on scam call centers in the region was harrowing, citing a 2023 United Nations estimate that 120,000 individuals had been forced to work in them amid brutal conditions and horrific punishments.

In February, 7,000 workers were freed from one of the facilities, displaced to camps in Myanmar. 

Governments in the region have attempted to shut the operations down, and in the weeks leading up to the workers' rescue, the Thai government completely cut electricity and telecommunications to five border towns where call centers were located.  

Those efforts were intended to slow or stop scam networks from operating in the region. However, The Guardian reported that over the past three months, Starlink has rapidly become Myanmar's largest internet service provider — despite not being licensed in the country.

On July 28, Sen. Maggie Hassan issued a press release publicly urging Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk to prevent Starlink service from being used by alleged scammers.

AFP has been covering scam call center activity in Myanmar, and in an article published on Oct. 14, Hassan told the agency that Congress' Joint Economic Committee initiated an investigation into Starlink's alleged facilitation of these networks.

Why is this investigation important?

At the top of Hassan's July press release, she highlighted a portion: "SpaceX has a responsibility to block criminals from using [Starlink] service to target Americans." 

Hassan asserted that networks like the ones targeted had "scammed Americans out of billions of dollars," and cited the ubiquity of scam communications in the United States.

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"While most people have probably noticed the increasing number of scam texts, calls, and emails they're receiving, they may not know that transnational criminals halfway across the world may be perpetrating these scams by using Starlink internet access," Hassan wrote.

Hassan indicated that losses worldwide topped $1 trillion in 2024. 

Erin West, a former prosecutor and founder of scam awareness organization Operation Shamrock, told The Guardian that the alleged involvement of an American firm was inexcusable.

"It is abhorrent that an American company is enabling this to happen," West remarked.

What's being done about these scams?

In addition to an ongoing Congressional Joint Economic Committee investigation into Starlink's alleged connection to scam networks in Myanmar, agencies at the federal and state levels are actively targeting them.

On Oct. 14, the Department of Justice announced the seizure of around $15 billion in bitcoin associated with what the agency said was a similar scam network in Cambodia, according to CNBC.

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