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Aidan Jones

Young, naive and now sleeping rough on a plastic sheet outside their embassy in Phnom Penh, Indonesians Abdul* and Hafiz* are among the expendable human resources of Southeast Asia’s scam trade.
After a year-long tumble through Cambodia’s vortex of scams, they were cast out onto a pavement – penniless and without passports – waiting for the embassy to issue new travel documents and a plane ticket home.
“Our Chinese boss stole all of our passports,” said Abdul, 20, gesturing to a dozen or so of his defeated compatriots squinting in the sun from behind a jumble of bags and umbrellas.
“He didn’t want any responsibility for us and did not pay any salary,” added Hafiz, 19, giving only one name like his friend. “Some people worked for one month, some for four months or for one year. Nobody has any money to take home.”

Under pressure from China and the US, Cambodia says it is scorched-earth time for the scammers, vowing they will be gone for good by April. Observers call it an ambitious deadline, especially given the scale of a criminal enterprise that has deeply embedded itself.
Across the country are dozens of compounds generating, depending on who you believe, as much as US$19 billion annually, equivalent to more than half Cambodia’s formal economy.
That money has poured into glitzy tower blocks and new developments rising from the dusty scrubland surrounding the capital – hot money bilked by 100,000 or so professional scammers, many of them tricked and trafficked into cybercrime.
“This is no longer just cybercrime. It’s organised crime. It involves human trafficking, money laundering and corruption all wrapped into one,” said Scott Schelble, deputy assistant director of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation’s International Operations Division, after a visit to Cambodia and Thailand in February.
“It’s not as simple as one location or another … as long as there are illicit gains to be made and there is an ease to do, the situation will likely continue.”
The blizzard of bad publicity has forced Prime Minister Hun Manet to concede that Cambodia has a problem. Scam networks were “destroying our honest economy”, he told reporters, giving Cambodia “a bad reputation” as the ground zero for a global scourge.

That notoriety was amplified by the arrest of Chen Zhi, a Chinese-born tycoon with Cambodian citizenship who served as an adviser to Hun Manet’s government. Wanted by both the US and China, Chen – who helmed the Prince Group conglomerate – allegedly ran Cambodian scam compounds and laundered hundreds of millions of dollars across the world.
Hun Manet has said Chen’s nefarious links came as a surprise. He has since been extradited to China.
As the self-imposed Wednesday deadline looms, the pace of raids on scam centres has picked up, but so have the doubts over the depth and durability of the crackdown.
Thousands of scammers from China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Ethiopia and Bangladesh have been detained across the country while others have made a run for it to neighbouring Thailand.

Abdul and Hafiz were caught in the capital at the start of this month, ending a year of being bounced between scam centres as plug-and-play con artists skilled in selling fake cryptocurrency investments to fellow Indonesians.
But they were also entirely disposable to the people higher up the scam pyramid, mainly Chinese bosses whose greed is matched only by the bottomless pool of victims waiting online.
“If they are not in jail they will not stop,” Hafiz said. “They will move somewhere else. 100 per cent for sure.”
Cycles of displacement
Scammers bolting from Cambodia have already been caught in Thailand, transiting to new hubs in Myanmar and Laos or regrouping at the margins.
Ten Chinese nationals were held by a Thai patrol on March 16 after crossing from Cambodia into Thailand’s eastern Chantaburi province, which sits on the border.
“Preliminary questioning indicated that the individuals had previously worked for a cyber scam network in a neighbouring country,” the Office of the Royal Thai Navy said in a statement, adding the group had “fled the operation and illegally crossed into Thailand.”
Two days later a group of seven Chinese was caught by police on the opposite side of Thailand, in Kanchanaburi province near the Myanmar border – also having entered from Cambodia.
On that border lies the Three Pagodas Pass and beyond to Payathonzu, a scam town that appears to be a sanctuary for fugitives from across the Mekong region looking to get back to work.

The escape routes fit a familiar pattern: following crackdowns, compounds retreat deeper into remote territory or scammers fracture into smaller, more nimble units operating from condos and villas. The wheels of the scam industry never stop turning.
“Solid law enforcement action has had an impact, but it has also led to displacement,” Rebecca Miller, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s regional lead for countering human trafficking and migrant smuggling, told This Week in Asia. “These criminal networks are very quick to respond to any action taken by governments.”
Last year, Myanmar was the stage for high-profile action on the scam centres. Television cameras were welcomed into the Myawaddy area by the ethnic armed group now controlling the region to see destroyed scam compounds at the notorious KK Park and pick through the debris of a global crime wave that has left virtually no country untouched.
A lot of the compounds emptied out, but they started filling up again
Mechelle Moore, anti-trafficking advocate
But the shadowy industry’s rebuild appears to have been almost instant.
“A lot of the compounds emptied out, but they started filling up again around December,” said Mechelle Moore, CEO of Global Alms, an NGO that rescues trafficking victims who have managed to flee the Myawaddy scam centres.
“It was a big propaganda act. The crackdown only really damaged a few locations … most are fully intact and new locations popped up in places that are very hard to get to.”
The powerful, from ethnic militias and border forces to politicians, typically deny any knowledge of, let alone complicity in, scam operations.
This is despite their vast scale and the logistical demands of housing tens of thousands of foreign nationals, as well as the political connections required to run a multibillion-dollar enterprise across the Mekong.


Crackdowns can therefore appear cosmetic, aimed more at mollifying Beijing, Washington, Tokyo or Seoul when they rail against the targeting of their citizens, rather than an attempt to clean house for good.
“They are not consistent, not thorough,” Moore said. “On many occasions they only catch the [trafficking] victims … all the bad actors are given a heads up a week before and they vanish.”
Cambodia’s relative poverty compounds the challenges. The World Bank puts the average daily wage at around US$10 a month, meaning scam bosses flush with cash can easily buy favours and a blind eye. They inhabit a parallel world to ordinary Cambodians, cruising between venues in top-of-the-range electric people-carriers while KTV bars, restaurants and chic barber shops cater to every need of a new moneyed class.
“They mostly keep to themselves. They have cars, they party, they drink and when there is a problem it is normally between Chinese people,” said one Phnom Penh resident who has previously worked with the scammers and requested anonymity. “There is an understanding that you don’t bring ordinary Cambodians into your problems.”

Villain or victim?
But the body count is mounting. Shootings, brazen ambushes and kidnappings of Chinese citizens – many ending with a corpse found in a ditch – are becoming increasingly common as scammers settle scores, especially around Cambodia’s Sihanoukville.
The coastal port city’s special economic zone was one of the first bases for Chinese entrepreneurs in Cambodia, with casinos targeting Chinese nationals that morphed into industrial-scale scam compounds during the pandemic. Cambodians speculate that some of the scammers are relocating there as the country’s capital is cleared out.
Cambodian authorities now face the near-impossible task of sorting villain from victim among the array of nationalities spilling out from the scam centres. Detention and deportation can take months for those without travel documents, while gleaning intelligence from seized phones and computers often exceeds the capacities of a poorly funded police force.

Many of those held have been trafficked, lured to Cambodia by job ads that turned out to be scams. Some have been abused on their bosses’ orders for failing to meet “sales targets” or trying to escape. The majority appear to be leaving without any payment, chewed up and spat out by the largest criminal enterprise on Earth, after drug trafficking.
Trudging to the airport gate with scores of others bound for the same deportation flight, Indonesian Teo* surveys the rag-tag ensemble, several in wheelchairs or limping despite their youth.
“Look around. No one here won anything, we just lost our time and our health,” he said ruefully. Teo, 40, spent a year away, separated from his four kids, most of it in detention after being caught in a scam bust. “It just feels good to go home,” he said.
*Full name withheld at interviewee’s request


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Cambodia

As Cambodia’s scam crackdown deadline looms, criminal gangs flee

A Thai soldier shines a torch into a room disguised as a Chinese police station inside an abandoned scam centre on the Thai-Cambodian border on March 12. Photo: AFP

A Cambodian military official shows computer equipment seized from raided cyberscam centres on March 11. Photo: AFP

Armed police escort Chen Zhi off a plane in January following his extradition from Cambodia in this screen grab from a video. Photo: China’s Ministry of Public Security/AFP

Detained scam centre suspects sleep at a police station in Phnom Penh on March 11. Photo: AFP

A room damaged by border clashes is seen inside an abandoned scam centre in O’Smach town on the Thai-Cambodian border on March 12. Photo: AFP

A group of Indonesian nationals removed from scam compounds are seen being deported via Techo International Airport earlier this month. Photo: Aidan Jones

Cambodian authorities display IDs and equipment seized from scam centres at a building in Phnom Penh on March 11. Photo: EPA

Southeast Asia’s scam compound survivors suffer in stigma and silence

Detained scam centre workers are seen after a raid on a compound in Myanmar’s eastern Myawaddy township last year. Photo: AFP

Ex-workers walk out of a suspected scam centre compound in Sihanoukville, Cambodia, on January 15. Photo: AFP

Workers sit at their desks during a raid of a suspected online scam compound in Manila last year. Photo: AFP

A Thai army officer looks inside an abandoned scam centre in O’Smach, on the Thai-Cambodian border, on March 12. Photo: AFP

A fake Singapore police station is seen inside an abandoned scam centre on the Thai-Cambodian border on Thursday. Photo: AFP

Southeast Asia’s multibillion-dollar scam industry refuses to die: ‘everyone gets a cut’

A woman counts US dollars and Japanese yen banknotes in Phnom Penh. Scam money’s reach extends far beyond the Mekong. Photo: AFP

A convoy of Lamborghinis leaves Bangkok en route to Pattaya. Scam proceeds wash up in the pool villas of Bangkok, the restaurants of Phnom Penh and the supercars of Vientiane. Photo: AFP

A photo circulated on social media in December, and reportedly taken in 2014, shows current Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul (right) with a group of people including South African national “Ben Smith” (third from left). Photo: Facebook/sorrayuth9115

A satellite photo shows the KK Park complex in Myanmar’s eastern Myawaddy township in September before a recent crackdown. The border town opposite Thailand is a notorious cybercrime hub. Photo: Planet Labs PBC / AFP

Scam centre workers and victims sit next to dismantled IT equipment during a crackdown on a scam operation in Shwe Kokko, Myawaddy township, in February. Photo: AFP

Cambodia’s scam factory survivors find no escape in freedom

People carry their belongings onto a bus as they leave a suspected scam centre compound in Sihanoukville, Cambodia, last month. Photo: AFP

Computers inside a scam compound used for fraud operations in Kampot province, Cambodia. Photo: Reuters

A Cambodian police officer stands guard near a scam compound in Kampot province on Tuesday. Photo: Reuters

A booth used to make scam calls containing scripts for scam dialogues and a fake Indonesian police uniform in Oddar Meanchey province, Cambodia. Photo: Reuters

Youga, from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, told reporters he was beaten often while inside a Cambodian scam compound. Photo: AP

A Thai soldier keeps guard outside a sized scam compound in O’Smach, Cambodia, on February 2. Photo: AP

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Scam bosses and their multibillion-dollar crime networks are fleeing to Myanmar, Laos and Thailand ahead of an April deadline


Scam bosses and their multibillion-dollar crime networks are fleeing to Myanmar, Laos and Thailand ahead of an April deadline.


As Cambodia’s scam crackdown deadline looms, criminal gangs flee

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Scam bosses and their multibillion-dollar crime networks are fleeing to Myanmar, Laos and Thailand ahead of an April deadline

Scam bosses and their multibillion-dollar crime networks are fleeing to Myanmar, Laos and Thailand ahead of an April deadline