3 injured after man with knife enters Montreal-area mosque
Three men were injured after trying to subdue a man armed with a knife during afternoon prayers at a Montreal-area mosque Friday afternoon.
Human trafficking-fuelled fraud is exploding in Southeast Asia with organized crime rings raking in close to US$3 trillion in illicit revenue annually, the head of Interpol has said in comments that reveal the huge profits being earned by cartels.
One international organized crime group makes $50 billion a year, according to Interpol secretary-general Jurgen Stock, adding that $2 trillion to $3 trillion of illicit money flows through the global financial system annually. To compare, France’s economy is worth $3.1 trillion according to the International Monetary Fund.
While drug trafficking contributes around 40% to 70% of organized crime income, criminal groups are also using those smuggling networks to illegally move humans, arms and stolen products among other things, Stock said.
“Driven by online anonymity, inspired by new business models and accelerated by COVID, these organized crime groups are now working at a scale that was unimaginable a decade ago,” Stock told a briefing at the global police co-ordination body’s Singapore office on Wednesday.
“Today, a bank – or indeed anyone – is less likely to be robbed at gunpoint than via a keyboard by someone on the other side of the world.
“What began as a regional crime threat in Southeast Asia has become a global human trafficking crisis, with millions of victims, both in the cyber scam centers and as targets.”
Interpol says its operations in Asia have led to nearly 3,500 arrests and the seizure of $300 million in illegally earned assets across 34 countries since 2021.
Survivor testimonies, NGO campaigning and media reporting over the past three years have increasingly exposed an explosion in online fraud gangs operating in Southeast Asia, many using de facto slave labor to target people across the globe, including the United States.
Victims from across Asia are often duped into seemingly legitimate jobs around the region and are then trafficked into scam compounds where they face serious abuse, including forced labor, arbitrary detention, degrading treatment or torture – often with minimal or no help from local authorities.
Hundreds of thousands of people are trafficked into online criminality across the region, according to a United Nations report last year.
The UN estimated that up to 120,000 people could be held in compounds across Myanmar, which has been plunged into civil war since a 2021 military coup, with another 100,000 people held in Cambodia and elsewhere in conditions that amount to modern slavery.
Criminal enterprises also exist in Laos, Thailand and the Philippines, with many of the lucrative online scam operations ranging from illegal gambling, to love scams and crypto fraud.
“People who are coerced into working in these scamming operations endure inhumane treatment while being forced to carry out crimes. They are victims. They are not criminals,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said in the report.
One key hub for scam syndicates is Myanmar, which shares a mountainous border with southwestern China – and Beijing is now trying to crack down on cross-border crime targeting Chinese nationals.
In heavily guarded compounds controlled by local warlords, tens of thousands of people, mainly Chinese, have been trapped and forced by criminal gangs to defraud strangers with sophisticated schemes over the internet. Beijing has pressed Myanmar’s military government to rein in the scam operations, but with limited success.
Elsewhere, casinos in the Philippines catering to illicit gamblers from China have spawned across the country with authorities in Manila struggling to curtail the rising number of gambling establishments used as fronts for scam centers and other fraudulent crimes.
Earlier this month, more than 800 Filipinos, Chinese and other nationals were rescued during a police raid of an online romance scam center posing as a casino some 100 kilometers from the capital, the official Philippine News Agency reported, citing local authorities. Hundreds of the victims were made to pose as lovers to lure people to send money, in what’s commonly known as a “pig-butchering” scam.
The victims, some from Malaysia and Vietnam, told local investigators that each forced worker was pressured by alleged crime lords to siphon $42,000 daily online, and said they were beaten when they did not meet that target.
And scammers are getting more sophisticated, using artificial intelligence to swindle corporations.
In Hong Kong, a finance worker at a multinational firm was tricked into paying $25 million to fraudsters using deepfake AI technology to pose as the company’s chief financial officer in a video conference call, according to local police. It is unknown where the scammers were based or where the huge sum of money went.
Three men were injured after trying to subdue a man armed with a knife during afternoon prayers at a Montreal-area mosque Friday afternoon.
Police have arrested an 18-year-old woman who allegedly stole a Porsche and then ran over its owner in an incident that was captured on video.
Since she was a young girl growing up in Vancouver, Ginny Lam says her mom Yat Hei Law made it very clear she favoured her son William, because he was her male heir.
A 15-year-old boy who was the subject of an emergency alert in New Brunswick has been arrested.
U.S. Vice-President Kamala Harris on Thursday issued a warning to any potential home intruder: 'If somebody breaks in my house, they're getting shot.'
What Cristiana Barsony-Arcidiacono, 49, the Italian-Hungarian CEO and owner of Hungary-based BAC Consulting, says she hasn't done is make the exploding pagers that killed 12 people and wounded more than 2,000 in Lebanon this week.
Advocates have identified the woman who died this week after being shot by police in Surrey, B.C., as a South American refugee who was raising a young daughter.
The search for a missing six-year-old boy in Shamattawa is continuing Friday as RCMP hope recent tips can help lead to a happy conclusion.
Provincial police investigating the death of a cat that was allegedly set on fire in Orillia earlier this week released surveillance video of a person of interest in the case.
Getting a photograph of a rainbow? Common. Getting a photo of a lightning strike? Rare. Getting a photo of both at the same time? Extremely rare, but it happened to a Manitoba photographer this week.
An anonymous business owner paid off the mortgage for a New Brunswick not-for-profit.
They say a dog is a man’s best friend. In the case of Darren Cropper, from Bonfield, Ont., his three-year-old Siberian husky and golden retriever mix named Bear literally saved his life.
A growing group of brides and wedding photographers from across the province say they have been taken for tens of thousands of dollars by a Barrie, Ont. wedding photographer.
Paleontologists from the Royal B.C. Museum have uncovered "a trove of extraordinary fossils" high in the mountains of northern B.C., the museum announced Thursday.
The search for a missing ancient 28-year-old chocolate donkey ended with a tragic discovery Wednesday.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police is celebrating an important milestone in the organization's history: 50 years since the first women joined the force.
It's been a whirlwind of joyful events for a northern Ontario couple who just welcomed a baby into their family and won the $70 million Lotto Max jackpot last month.
A Good Samaritan in New Brunswick has replaced a man's stolen bottle cart so he can continue to collect cans and bottles in his Moncton neighbourhood.