He Went to Myanmar to Get Rich. They Took His Kidney Instead.

He crossed the border himself

In 2021, Tang Moufeng crossed into northern Myanmar illegally. He entered a fraud compound in Wa State and joined a telecom scam operation.

He was not kidnapped. He crossed the border himself. Before he left China, he knew what he was going to do. Or he knew it was not a normal job.

Many people at the bottom of the scam chain in northern Myanmar are not simple victims. They go willingly. They hear that northern Myanmar is full of easy money. They hear that telecom fraud pays fast. They think they will be the ones holding the knife.

The compounds need Chinese workers. Chinese workers can trick other Chinese people. Recruiters use fellow villagers, friends, and acquaintances. They promise high pay, free food and housing, paid flights, free travel. They say the job is carrying jade, carrying watches, or delivering rhino horn. The scripts are simple. They work on people who need money.

Tang Moufeng was not the first. He will not be the last.

The 70,000-yuan IOU

Inside the compound, Tang Moufeng performed badly. The company forced him to sign an IOU for 70,000 yuan.

That IOU was not a normal debt. Once he signed it, he stopped being an employee. He became property. He could be sold, moved, and disposed of.

He was sold from compound to compound. Each sale turned him into cash. Wei Huairen, head of the Wei family criminal group in northern Myanmar, once said: “Chinese workers are the most important resource. The purchase price of a Chinese worker rose from 20,000 yuan to more than 300,000 yuan.”

When a person has a price, work disappears.

At the new company, Tang Moufeng still failed to meet targets. He was beaten every day. The beatings were not punishment. They were training. They were meant to break his dignity, his resistance, and his belief that he was still human.

The beatings continued until his wounds rotted and he could not walk.

The surgery in a farmyard

The company offered one last solution: sell a kidney to pay the debt.

Tang Moufeng said on camera: “The boss was called A Gui. He called me alone into the office. He said the match was successful. Then he took me out to a farmyard, and the surgery was done there.”

The organ removal happened in a farmyard. Not behind high walls. Not in a secret hospital. The chain had a cheap, repeatable, and hidden way to remove organs.

After a man is beaten until he cannot walk, his last value is not his labor or his scam performance. It is his organs.

Tang Moufeng also said: “Never mind one kidney. I would have given a leg, an arm, anything, as long as I could walk.”

When a person will trade an organ for freedom, he has already been stripped of the status of a human being.

Criminal and victim

Hu Xiaoxiong, deputy head of the Criminal Investigation Brigade of the Xiaoshan District Public Security Bureau in Hangzhou, gave this definition: “They are both criminals and victims. Their lives run along two parallel lines that never meet: one waiting for the law to punish them, the other waiting for the police to rescue them.”

That definition points to a fact that gets lost: people at the bottom of the northern Myanmar scam chain have two identities.

Tang Moufeng crossed the border illegally. He broke border management laws. He joined a fraud operation. He was part of the criminal chain. That is true.

He was beaten, sold, and had a kidney removed. That is also true.

He does not get a free pass because he was a victim. His suffering does not disappear because he was also a criminal.

The northern Myanmar scam chain makes people at the bottom eat one another. Good performance means tricking more people in. Bad performance means beatings, resale, and organ removal. It is a closed loop. Almost no one inside it wins.

Tang Moufeng said: “Even the word ‘piglet’ flatters us. They do not treat you as a human being at all. Not as a thing.”

Who becomes next

On July 15, 2025, a mother in Hubei asked Elephant News for urgent help. Her son, a high school student, and two classmates went to Xishuangbanna on June 24. They lost contact. They were suspected to be in Myanmar.

The mother said her son met a “big brother” online. The man invited the boy and two classmates to Yunnan to “deliver rhino horn.” On June 24, the three children flew to Kunming. They said they would be home in three days.

Then nothing.

Hu Yixiao, an 18-year-old high school student from Lujiang, Anhui, saw a part-time job ad: “Carry gold, 100,000 yuan per trip.” He knew it meant crossing the border illegally. He still took the risk for the money. He was trapped in northern Myanmar for 51 days.

Sanlian Life Weekly reported another case. Chen Zhicheng, 16, dropped out of vocational school and could not find work. A customer who “looked very honest” lured him to Myanmar with a bar job in Kunming paying 10,000 yuan a month. He climbed over a border fence with the man. He changed vehicles more than a dozen times. He ended up in a fraud compound.

A police officer who works on border persuasion and return in Yunnan said that after 2023, more university students in their twenties began to appear. Now there are many middle school students. “More than 50 percent of the minors were lured there.”

These children share one trait. They know something about the world. They know very little about work. They want money fast. They do not know the price can be a kidney.

Legal red lines

Besides illegal border crossing, young people can fall into another trap: aiding information network criminal activities.

Article 322 of the Criminal Law says: Whoever violates border management laws and crosses the border illegally, if the circumstances are serious, shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not more than one year, criminal detention, or public surveillance, and shall also be fined. Whoever crosses the border illegally to join a terrorist organization, receive terrorist training, or carry out terrorist activities shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not less than one year but not more than three years, and shall also be fined.

Data from the Supreme People’s Procuratorate shows that since the “Operation Card-breaking” began in October 2020, prosecutions for aiding information network criminal activities have risen fast. It is now the third most prosecuted crime, after dangerous driving and theft.

Defendants under 35 make up more than 80 percent. Defendants under 25 make up one-third. Minors and students are a serious part of the problem.

Renting out bank cards, WeChat and Alipay accounts, and phone cards to help fraud payments is the most common charge for minors. Many young people think they are just lending a card or doing a favor. They have already joined the fraud chain.

No threshold, high return

Northern Myanmar is not a gold mine.

Fraud groups overseas use “high-paying jobs, food and lodging included, flights reimbursed, free travel” to lure people out of China.

The Ministry of Public Security has issued warnings: Do not believe overseas high-paying recruitment information. Do not travel to northern Myanmar by any means, including illegal border crossing through Yunnan or transit through Southeast Asian countries such as Cambodia. Install the National Anti-Fraud Center app and turn on call warnings. Set social media accounts to private. Block recruitment and travel ads from strangers.

Long-distance travel, going to northern Myanmar, and the promise of high pay. When these appear together, be careful.

If you are determined to make a big fortune, no one can talk you out of it. Remember one thing: you are thinking about the high pay. They are thinking about your kidney.

Back to the start

Tang Moufeng’s story is not a dark joke about karma. It shows how a criminal chain turns a person into an object.

Every overseas recruitment ad that says “no threshold, high return” adds fuel to this chain. When a person takes that road, he gives up his status as a human being. What remains is a “piglet” waiting for a price.

The four major families of northern Myanmar have been exposed. Their crimes are many. They have harmed ordinary Chinese people. Making money is hard. It is all blood and sweat.

Control yourself. Do not let a get-rich-quick dream become the price of an organ.

No threshold, high return. These are scams.

Do not become the next Tang Moufeng.