Southeast Asia’s scam gangs regroup after Cambodia’s purge
Dislodged from Cambodian compounds, cyberscam cartels have been setting up shop in Laos, Myanmar and even Malaysia
Scam centres proliferated across Cambodia during the pandemic, when hundreds of thousands of jobless young people were pulled into defunct casino complexes to target victims worldwide with bogus romance, cryptocurrency and investment frauds.
The sector operated largely in the open despite government denials of complicity or profit. It also triggered a human trafficking crisis, with tens – perhaps hundreds – of thousands forced to work in scam compounds.
In July, the United Nation’s Office on Drugs and Crime estimated that scam-related losses across the Asia-Pacific reached between US$88 billion and US$114 billion in 2025 alone, a sum that it said “even at the low end, outstrips the GDP of several countries in the region”.
For comparison, Cambodia’s gross domestic product in 2025 was around US$50 billion, while Myanmar’s stood at roughly US$82 billion, according to World Bank estimates.
Displaced, not destroyed
Cambodia’s Information Ministry said in February that more than 250 scam sites had been closed down as its crackdown gathered pace, with 48,000 foreign nationals deported.