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Desperate Optimism, a 24-year-old recent college graduate from Canada, met a new friend on Facebook after a difficult breakup. Despite the financial loss, Desperate Optimism empathized with her scammer. Unexpectedly, after a full month of communication, they developed a deep friendship and a bond of trust, continuing to chat for months even after she confronted him, without any exchange of money or discussion of investments.

After two different failed romantic experiences a few years ago, I avoided online dating apps, focused on completing my university studies and starting my career. At the time, I had been dating my college sweetheart for about two and a half years (actually only a year and a half due to intermittent dating during the Covid-19 lockdown). The Covid-19 situation, which has caused the breakup of many couples, like mine, revealed numerous behavioral, personality, and cultural differences between my partner and me. I was heartbroken because we cared deeply for each other, but our differences were too great to handle, so a breakup was inevitable.

These circumstances led me to this scam. Even before the scam, I was always receiving random friend requests on Facebook and ignoring them. Most were from mature-looking men whose profiles featured lavish photos of their lives. But when I broke up with my ex, I received a request from a completely different person, a younger-looking man who looked to be in his twenties. As I decided to leave my ex behind and move on with my life, I was ready to talk to new people, but I was still hesitant to use dating apps, so I decided to accept his friend request on June 16th. We started chatting, but I wasn't expecting anything: perhaps a new friendship would form. What happened next is familiar to most victims (loss of money, heartbreak, etc.).

The whole experience lasted over a month. The problems began on July 23rd, when I tried to withdraw my money and realized I'd been scammed. The next day, I searched for romance scams and discovered Shazhu Pan's scam. For the first few days, I was shocked, hurt, and felt betrayed, but I agreed to the condition of not getting my money back. Later, I confronted my scammer, telling him I'd read about people lured abroad with the promise of decent jobs. He sincerely apologized and revealed much of the background information about the scam, the working conditions the scammers forced to work, and their lives there. Here are their general profiles:

Upon their arrival in Myanmar (or mostly somewhere in Southeast Asia), they are subjected to various forms of violence against their will.

They are not allowed to leave the office except to sleep.

They are allowed only one phone call a month with their families, under surveillance; they are not allowed to reveal their employment or real living conditions.

They are shocked with electric batons and deprived of food, or beaten with steel bars if they don't complete their daily tasks.

They work 16-hour days and may be required to work overtime (which means less sleep) if certain daily targets aren't met.

They are only provided two meals a day.

If other scam companies fail to meet their targets within the contractual period, they are eliminated (or in other words, sold) to other scam companies, perhaps to spend the rest of their lives in a coal mine, or to a tribe (I'm still not entirely sure what it is, but my scammer said it was terrible, almost a death sentence).

The local government in Myanmar acknowledges the existence of the scam industry because the army staged a coup earlier this year and seized all power (the scam organizations paid the army a certain amount of money to continue their operations).

*Disclaimer: I know this doesn't represent the situation of all scammers, but I just wanted to write this for those who might be interested. We continued to chat daily for a week without his company's knowledge, as he deleted our chat history before his company checked. One day, out of the blue, one of his colleagues (a senior colleague who often took care of him) was asked to block his account for processing. I asked him what had happened to my original scammer. Apparently, he hadn't deleted our last conversation in time, and the company realized that confidential information had been leaked, so they locked him up.