Myanmar Approves Death Penalty for Forced Scam Labor, Life for Crypto Fraud

Myanmar's military-backed parliament passed a law on Tuesday allowing the death penalty for people who use violence or unlawful detention to force others into running online scams. Where such abuse kills the victim, "the death penalty shall be imposed," according to the draft published in May.

That draft set a maximum of life imprisonment for anyone who runs an online scam center or commits "digital currency scams (crypto scams)," alongside terms of 10 years to life for the coercion offenses. Lower house MP Aye Chan told AFP the death penalty survived into the approved version, and that "the important parts of the bill remained the same." The full text has not been released.

The bill is the first law passed by the government of Min Aung Hlaing, who led the 2021 coup and took office as civilian president in April. A quarter of the seats in both houses—166—are reserved for the military under the constitution, and the USDP won 339 of the rest in phased elections that Aung San Suu Kyi's dissolved party could not contest.

Crypto scam compounds in Asia

The U.S. Treasury sanctioned the Karen National Army, formerly the Karen Border Guard Force, as a transnational criminal organization in May 2025, saying the militia's territory on the Thai border "is home to multiple cyber scam syndicates" and that it "has benefitted from its connection to Burma's military." The KNA denies involvement in scams.

Scam operations across East Asia, Southeast Asia and Oceania drove $88.3 billion to $114.1 billion in losses in 2025, the UNODC estimates, with people from at least 80 countries found inside the compounds. Cambodia has advanced its own bill setting life terms for compound bosses, and U.S. prosecutors seized $25 million in crypto tied to scams routed through the region this month. The UN agency has warned that police in the region still cannot trace proceeds on-chain.

Myanmar resumed judicial executions in 2022, hanging four activists in the first such killings since 1976. Min Aung Hlaing commuted every death sentence in the country to life imprisonment in April, days after taking office. Three months on, his parliament has legislated new ones.