Cambodia says it has flushed out a scam industry estimated to have stolen tens of billions of US dollars last year alone, but a string of arrests in recent days suggests the gangs behind it may have simply changed address.
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.
Chinese criminal networks found an easy foothold in a country with a reputation for entrenched corruption, but that foothold brought intense pressure from Beijing, and later Washington, to dismantle the shadowy trade.
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.