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Times

Inside the Cambodian scam compound preying on British pensioners

Lights flicker along a damp, shadowy corridor hidden beneath a five-storey casino, where offices with taped-up windows line the passageway and silhouettes of workers hunched over glowing screens are projected through curtains. This is a notorious scam compound, heavily influenced by the Chinese mafia, in Bavet, a city in southern Cambodia on the border with Vietnam. It is one of several near-identical megacomplexes on a single road, hiding dozens of scam businesses where workers are forced to operate fake online profiles for hours without breaks — carrying out romance and cryptoscams on international victims. The majority of these workers, who are trained to target British, American and Australian adults through dating sites and social media platforms, say they were lured into their roles under false