Myanmar's military-backed parliament passed the Anti-Online Scam Bill on Tuesday, marking the first law under Min Aung Hlaing's new government.

A draft published in May set a maximum sentence of life imprisonment for running a scam center or committing "digital currency scams."

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime estimates that scam losses across the wider region reached $88.3 billion to $114.1 billion in 2025.

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

That draft set a maximum punishment of life imprisonment for anyone who runs an online scam center or commits "digital currency scams (crypto scams)," along with prison terms of 10 years to life for coercion offenses. Lower house MP Aye Chan told AFP that the death penalty remained in the approved version and that "the important parts of the bill remained the same." The full text has not been released. The bill adds a legal response to a crime network that has spread across multiple countries in the region, where compounds have drawn in workers from far beyond Myanmar's borders and made scam enforcement a cross-border challenge.

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. Under the constitution, one-quarter of the seats in both houses — 166 in total — are reserved for the military, and the USDP won 339 of the remaining seats in phased elections that Aung San Suu Kyi's dissolved party could not contest.

Crypto scam compounds in Asia

In May 2025, the U.S. Treasury sanctioned the Karen National Army, formerly the Karen Border Guard Force, as a transnational criminal organization. Treasury said 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.

The UNODC estimates that scam operations across East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Oceania drove $88.3 billion to $114.1 billion in losses in 2025, with people from at least 80 countries found inside the compounds. Cambodia has moved forward with 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 later, his parliament has enacted new ones.