Two senior U.S. House committee chairmen have formally pressed the State and Treasury Departments to investigate a scam and human-trafficking network across Southeast Asia, with a blacklist naming 28 individuals and entities — including high-profile figures such as Benjamin Mauerberger, Yim Leak, and former Thai deputy finance minister Vorapak Tanyawong.
The U.S. Congress compiled evidence and sent a letter urging the Departments of State and the Treasury to investigate within 180 days whether sanctions laws such as the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act should be applied to the 28 named individuals and groups tied to scam-center networks, human trafficking, and human rights abuses.
The letter itself — sent September 15, 2026 by Rep. Brian Mast (Chairman, House Foreign Affairs Committee) and Rep. John Moolenaar (Chairman, House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party) to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent — lays out the case in detail. It argues that Chinese transnational criminal syndicates have built industrial-scale scam compounds across Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos, generating enormous profits from “pig butchering” cryptocurrency scams and romance cons that defraud Americans, while trafficking roughly 400,000 people from more than 70 countries into forced labor inside these compounds.
The lawmakers cite estimates that scam profits amount to nearly 40% of the Mekong subregion’s combined formal GDP, and as much as 60% of Cambodia’s GDP alone, while accusing regime and government officials in the three countries of tolerating or actively profiting from the industry despite periodic, largely performative crackdowns.
The letter invokes the 2025 State Department designation of both Cambodia and Burma as state sponsors of human trafficking, along with President Trump’s March 2026 executive order on combating cybercrime and predatory schemes targeting Americans, as grounds for pursuing sanctions under Global Magnitsky authority as well as Burma-related, cyber-related, and transnational-crime-organization sanctions regimes.
The 28-name list submitted for investigation includes Benjamin Mauerberger, Chou Bun Eng, Edward Lee, Michael Chiam, Vorapak Tanyawong, Yim Leak, Zhong Baojia, and the entities Fully Light Group of Companies and White Sands Palace Casino, among others.
The letter closes by urging swift action, arguing that sanctioning those on the list would send a strong deterrent message to both the criminal networks and the foreign officials who enable them. Copies were sent to Attorney General Todd Blanche and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin.
