The US House of Representatives, through Brian Mast, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, and John Moolenaar, chairman of the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, has formally sent a letter pressing Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to step up investigations and impose sanctions on cybercrime and transnational human trafficking networks. They stated that American citizens have lost enormous assets to online fraud networks, particularly cryptocurrency investment scams known as pig butchering, which are run by Chinese transnational criminal networks operating out of Southeast Asia. More than 400,000 trafficking victims from over 70 countries have been forced to work in compounds and subjected to severe torture. The House also pointed to structural corruption, saying senior officials and powerful figures in Mekong-region countries such as Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos are complicit and turn a blind eye, to the point that cyber scam revenue in the region has soared to a massive share of GDP. The House therefore called on the State Department and the Treasury Department to investigate within 180 days with a view to imposing sanctions under laws such as the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act on a total of 28 target individuals and entities, comprising 26 individuals and 2 entities with evidence linking them to scam center networks, human trafficking, human rights abuses or high-level corruption. Among the 26 individuals is Vorapak Tanyawong, while the two entities are Fully Light Group of Companies, LTD and White Sands Palace Casino. The move aligns with President Donald Trump's Executive Order 14390 on tackling cybercrime and fraud, in order to send a serious warning to transnational criminal networks and influential figures abroad.
Named as one of two entities the US House urges sanctions investigations against for links to scam-center and trafficking networks.
