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The Star
5 days ago
- Politics
- The Star
Why Cambodia's scam crackdown is unlikely to target masterminds
PHNOM PENH: Despite the Cambodian government's largest-ever crackdown on scam operations, there is growing scepticism over whether those at the top will ever face justice, according to researchers. Channel NewsAsia published an analysis by Ivan Franceschini, a Lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Melbourne, and Ling Li, a PhD candidate in Technology Facilitated Modern Slavery at Ca' Foscari University of Venice. The report highlights that last month, Cambodia launched its largest crackdown to date on the online scam industry, which has taken root in the country and operated in plain sight. On July 16, Prime Minister Hun Manet issued a directive acknowledging the increasing threat posed by these operations, instructing provincial officials, law enforcement agencies, courts, and the national gambling commission to take action. As raids began across the country, Telegram channels used by cybercriminals erupted with frantic warnings. Some claimed police were setting up roadblocks, detaining people without passports, and demanding bribes for their release. Videos also surfaced showing mass evacuations from scam compounds. The government soon hailed the crackdown's success, announcing nearly 140 raids and the arrest of over 3,000 suspects from at least 19 countries, with more than half of those detained being from China and Vietnam. However, authorities also claimed that very few of these 'suspects' had been held against their will. Yet, research previously published in The Conversation reveals that thousands of individuals have been trafficked or tricked into these compounds and forced into work under conditions that resemble modern-day slavery. The crackdown has been praised by China and other countries that have faced the fallout from this scam industry, whether through the trafficking of their citizens to Cambodia or the targeting of their own citizens by scammers operating from there. However, despite the scale of the operation and the government's promise to eliminate scam syndicates in Cambodia, widespread scepticism remains about whether these efforts will truly dismantle the industry. Previous crackdowns on scam compounds have failed because they fail to address the two key factors that allow the industry to thrive. The first is the powerful local networks that protect scam operators, and the second is the sophisticated physical infrastructure of the compounds themselves. As long as the elites who provide protection for scam operators remain untouched, and the compounds remain operational, scammers can quickly resume their activities once the pressure subsides. While crackdowns may temporarily disrupt the operations, the people arrested are typically low-level workers, not the masterminds behind the scams. Once the crackdown ends, activities resume: scam operators either go underground until the storm passes or relocate to safer locations. Even confiscated equipment is easily replaced, as are the workers. The crackdown coincided with a brief conflict between Thailand and Cambodia that displaced over 300,000 people. Analysts have linked this to long-standing border tensions and the rising hostilities following the death of a Cambodian soldier in a skirmish in May. However, Thailand has attributed the conflict to its own efforts to tackle Cambodian scam operations. Earlier this year, Thailand cut power and internet access to the Poipet City area, a hotspot for scams near the Cambodian border. In early July, Thailand escalated its actions by targeting a powerful Cambodian senator and tycoon known to own large properties in Poipet, which Thai authorities allege are connected to the online scam trade. Thai criminal court issued an arrest warrant for the senator and raided his properties in Thailand. Authorities also targeted his children and their Thai assets. In response, a Cambodian official accused Thailand of long being a 'central hub for transnational crimes' in South-East Asia, and of 'shifting blame' for the issue onto Cambodia. While Thailand has stepped up efforts to curb the scam industry, it is likely using the issue to bolster domestic support while challenging Cambodian elites who are accused of profiting from the industry. - The Nation/ANN
The Diplomat
08-08-2025
- The Diplomat
The Origins of Southeast Asia's ‘Scamdemic'
Over the past decade, Southeast Asia has become a major hub for cyber-enabled fraud, human trafficking, and financial crime. These scams target victims around the world through fraudulent investment schemes and trading platforms, generating vast illicit profits. 'Scam: Inside Southeast Asia's Cybercrime Compounds' is the first book to give a comprehensive account of this industry. Written by Ivan Franceschini, Ling Li, and Mark Bo, it is a deeply researched and compelling study, drawing on extensive fieldwork, careful access to difficult sites, and sensitive interviewing, as well as the authors' decades of experience working in Southeast Asia and China. 'Scam' makes at least three major contributions. First, it offers the most complete synthesis to date of how the scam industry emerged, moved, and embedded itself in Southeast Asia. Second, it develops the concept of compound capitalism to explain the industry's internal organization and the political and economic systems that sustain it. Third, it emphasizes the human dimension at the center of the story, showing how recruitment, coercion, and exploitation shape the lived experiences of those inside the scam compounds operating in parts of the region. The first contribution comes through in the opening chapters, which trace the scams' trajectory from Taiwan's phone fraud operations in the 1990s, to mainland China, and then to Southeast Asia in the 2010s. This chronology shows how the industry adapted to enforcement pressure, relocating to jurisdictions with permissive regulation and selective oversight. Early chapters also examine the complex and sometimes politically sensitive relationship between the scams and the Chinese state. The authors reject claims that the industry is centrally directed from Beijing. Instead, they describe a patchwork of responses shaped by law enforcement priorities, political caution in dealings with host governments, and moments of inaction linked to diplomatic considerations. They also note instances where Chinese-built infrastructure has ended up housing scam operations, framing this as a problem of weak oversight rather than deliberate policy. The book draws throughout on examples from Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and the Philippines to show how the industry has embedded in different contexts. These are not discrete case studies but illustrative examples of the conditions in which scams take hold. In Cambodia, operations are closely linked to casinos, real estate developments, and business or industrial parks, often in plain view. In Laos, scams concentrate in industrial zones dominated by Chinese investment, where regulatory oversight is minimal and enforcement is rare. In Myanmar, they are spread across the country, but operate most visibly in border areas controlled by militias and armed groups, whose activities are often tolerated or supported by the central state, in regions with long histories of illicit trade. The Philippines offers a contrasting trajectory: the scams grew alongside the regulated gambling sector, exploiting complex licensing and local brokerage networks before facing more determined federal enforcement. These examples show that scams embed most successfully in jurisdictions where regulatory gaps intersect with political or economic incentives to tolerate them. In highlighting these varied settings, the authors prompt political questions that will stimulate further research. Why has the industry embedded more deeply in some countries than others? How have local political dynamics shaped its resilience, even as its costs become more visible? Why has enforcement in the Philippines, for example, fragmented operations in a way not seen in Cambodia or Laos? The book's second contribution is the development of the concept of 'compound capitalism' to capture how scam compounds operate. Compounds are enclosed sites where workers both live and work, under constant supervision and restricted movement. They function as tightly controlled zones of labor, space, and profit extraction, comparable to South African mining compounds and China's dormitory labor regime. Sustained by political protection, these 'zones of exception' link into broader networks of capital and data flows, embedding the industry within local economies and transnational profit structures. This helps explain how the scams have become so entrenched, while also pointing to questions about how such arrangements adapt across different political and economic contexts. Franceschini, Li, and Bo map the range of actors who benefit from these arrangements. At the center are the operators, investors, and brokers who run the compounds and recruit workers, often linked to transnational organized crime networks. Political and economic elites are also part of the picture, whether ruling party members in Cambodia or Laos, or paramilitary and state officials in Myanmar. But the authors also show how important the trade has become for local economies. Property developments, service providers, and brokers all profit. Landlords, local businesses, and surrounding communities gain economically. This wider web of beneficiaries helps explain why the industry embeds so securely in certain places, despite its visibility. The third contribution, the human dimension of the labor force involved in the scams, is woven throughout but comes into sharp focus in Chapters 2 and 5. Chapter 2 examines recruitment, showing how people are drawn in by job offers, sometimes from acquaintances, promising high wages abroad. Economic insecurity makes these offers persuasive, while brokers profit from placing recruits into compounds. Chapter 5 turns to exit, where leaving is dangerous and uncertain. Compounds are guarded, violence is routine, and ransom demands are common. Rescue often depends on NGOs, foreign embassies, or private negotiation, while repatriation is complicated by limited cooperation between states and the misclassification of trafficked workers as offenders. In taking this approach, the authors' analysis complicates portrayals of those working in the compounds. While they may be involved in perpetrating crimes, many entered through deception or coercion and are held in conditions that align with trafficking. The authors resist framing them as an entirely distinct category of victim, instead situating their experiences within broader patterns of forced and coerced labor. They also draw attention to what happens after workers leave the compounds, a stage often overlooked in public discussions. Survivors are frequently assumed to be safe once they are released, but exit is only the start of another uncertain journey, shaped by legal misclassification, limited state support, and the lasting consequences of coercion and violence. Enforcement by host governments, as the book shows, is reactive, uneven, and often cosmetic. In some cases, crackdowns are prompted by international attention or diplomatic pressure. Often, operations are relocated rather than dismantled, shifting to jurisdictions or areas where oversight is weaker. The Philippines stands out for enforcement that has disrupted parts of the industry, though even here the effect is partial. These patterns raise questions about the role of enforcement capacity, political will, and international cooperation in shaping the industry's resilience. The book makes clear that scams are not static. Crackdowns in one jurisdiction and shifting political conditions in another are pushing operations into new locations. This is borne out by recent findings from the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, which has documented the spread of scam operations to the Pacific, Africa, and other regions. While 'Scam' keeps its focus on Southeast Asia, its analysis highlights the conditions under which the industry could take root elsewhere. It is a reminder of how easily scams can spread and integrate into local economies, underscoring the role of corrupt local conditions, the failures of international regulation, the gaps in financial oversight, and the laundering mechanisms that allow these operations to move across borders with relative ease. 'Scam' is a comprehensive and carefully researched account that will become an essential reference for those interested in the scamming industry in Southeast Asia and beyond. By setting out the industry's history, organization, and human impact with such clarity, it provides both a definitive study of one of Southeast Asia's most entrenched illicit economies and a foundation for thinking about how this trade is evolving as a global phenomenon. The Diplomat is an affiliate of and will earn a commission if you purchase a book using the link above.
New York Post
06-07-2025
- New York Post
Inside the cyber-scam capital of the world
The message from Alice was blunt: 'I don't trust you. You are one of them, right? You all just want to sell me like some animal.' Alice's hostile reaction wasn't completely surprising to Ivan Franceschini, Ling Li and Mark Bo, the co-authors of 'Scam: Inside Southeast Asia's Cybercrime Compounds' (Verso), out July 8. 'Like the dozens of other survivors we met in the following months,' they write, 'her harrowing experience had left her unable to trust anyone.' 9 The past half-decade has seen a nefarious web of cyber-scam operations set up shop across Southeast Asia, luring (and trapping) workers from across the globe targeting victims on every corner of the planet. Getty Images Advertisement Alice (not her real name), a Taiwanese single mom, had recently escaped from a Cambodian scam compound where she'd been raped, beaten, sold multiple times and nearly forced into a brothel. She'd been lured to the town of Sihanoukville by a friend who promised her a legitimate job, and even paid for her visa and flight. What awaited Alice, however, was not a front-desk position but forced criminal labor in an online fraud mill. 'The supervisor informed her that she had been sold there to conduct online scams,' the authors write, 'and that she would not be allowed to leave until she had earned enough money for the company.' Advertisement 9 The center of Asia's cyber-criminal network. libin – When she resisted, the supervisor threatened Alice with a stun gun and 'said that if she did not comply, he would lock her up in a room and let several men rape her,' the authors write. 'Which is exactly what happened soon after.' They tried to make her a 'pig butcher,' referring to a slow-burn online scam that involved using fictional profiles of wealthy, attractive people to blackmail hapless marks. Alice refused to play along, feigning ignorance of how to type. They made her clean. Then they sold her again. And again. This is what modern slavery looks like in the internet age. Alice is just one victim among several interviewed by the authors, all of them part of a vast criminal economy with operations across Southeast Asia. In countries like Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar, cybercrime syndicates run industrial-scale scam operations staffed by trafficked laborers and protected by complicit authorities. Advertisement 9 The beachy town of Sihanoukville in Cambodia has become the nexus of that nation's cyber-scam trade. AWL Images – The industry blossomed during the pandemic, when 'scam operators achiev[ed] record profits capitalising on the misery and loneliness of people stuck in endless lockdowns,' the authors write. According to the latest UN estimates, there were in 2023 'at least 120,000 people . . . forced to carry out online scams across Myanmar, with another 100,000 in Cambodia,' write the authors. At the center of this ecosystem is Sihanoukville, a once-sleepy Cambodian beach town transformed into 'a global online scam hub,' the authors write. The transformation began in the mid-2010s, when Chinese criminal groups began buying up property, converting apartments, villas and hotel rooms into closed compounds for scam work. These were not fly-by-night setups. They came with dorms, cafeterias, surveillance rooms and punishment cells. By the late 2010s, Sihanoukville had become a scam metropolis. 9 Pres. Trump has vowed to crackdown on cyber-crime syndicates in Cambodia and across Asia. Will Oliver – Pool via CNP / MEGA Advertisement The business model was simple: Traffic in people, extract money from strangers online and do it all behind steel doors. The operations 'often look like standard apartment buildings with unusually strict security measures,' the authors write. 'Such as high walls with barbed wire and guards posted at gates, to prevent people from escaping as much as to stop unauthorized people from entering.' The profits were massive. The risk was minimal. And the victims weren't only the ones on the other end of the keyboard. 9 Trump's most visible target is the company Huione Pay. Google Maps George, a Ugandan man in his early 30s with an IT degree, was recruited from Dubai in August 2022, to manage data in Laos. He was offered a monthly salary of $1,500, plus allowances and commissions. Once there, he signed a fake contract, had his passport taken and was put to work defrauding people using prewritten scripts. When he refused, he was sold to another compound in Myanmar. 'They don't tell you [how much they sell you for],' he told the authors. 'They just tell you: 'We own you. We bought you' . . . It's weird. It takes you back to the ages of the slave trade in Africa.' Inside the compounds, daily life blends corporate dystopia with prison brutality. New workers are given scripts and digital playbooks with titles like 'Phrases for Love, Friendship, and Gambling.' There are quotas, and heavy surveillance. Everything workers type can be tracked. 9 The new book 'Scam' explores Southeast Asia's cybercrime factories. If they miss a quota, punishment follows. Some workers are forced to do 'frog jumps,' an excruciating squat exercise repeated for hours. Others are made to run up and down stairs, or stand in the blistering sun for hours while holding heavy objects. The unlucky and disobedient ones are beaten or sold. Advertisement The scams themselves are psychologically sophisticated. Pig butchering involves building rapport over weeks or even months before proposing a seemingly low-risk investment in a phony crypto platform. Once the victim's guard is down — and their life savings transferred — the scammer ghosts them. Some workers are paid commissions based on how much their victims lose. 'Bonuses can be lucrative,' the authors write, 'and the rules are often posted in public areas as a reminder to all staff.' Others are forced to perform the scams without pay under threat of physical harm. The result is a chilling blend of victim and perpetrator: exploited laborers trained to exploit others. 9 'Scam' co-author Ivan Franceshini. Courtesy of Ivan Franceschini One company in Cambodia charged workers for everything they used inside: toilets, chairs, keyboards, the portion of floor they occupied and even the 'seaside air' they breathed. 'Consequently, no matter how long they work, their debts can continue to grow,' the authors write. Many go deeper into debt while trapped, their families extorted for ransom payments that may or may not result in release. The psychological toll is devastating. Alice described 'brainwashed' survivors who 'developed some mental illness.' Meanwhile, her own family thought she was trafficked 'because I am greedy and wanted to get rich overnight,' Alice admits. Advertisement Efforts to crack down have had limited effect. When compounds in Cambodia are raided, the operators move to Laos. When Laos tightens regulations, they set up shop in Myanmar. There are always more buildings, more bribes and more desperate people willing to answer job ads that turn out to be traps. The authors note that these operations are not rogue or isolated. They are systems. Ecosystems. And they are growing. 'Tech companies are failing to ensure that their services are not used as platforms for organised criminals,' the authors write. Messaging apps continue to facilitate communication between recruiters and victims. Governments continue to look the other way — or actively profit from the business. 9 Co-author Mark Bo. Courtesy of Mark Bo Even when victims are rescued, justice is rare. Some are deported. Others are treated as criminals. A few, like Alice, find ways to speak out. Most don't. And even for those who escape, the trauma lingers. Alice eventually found a way to post a call for help on Instagram and 'was rescued before being sold a fifth time,' the authors write. She now works with advocacy groups to warn others about the dangers of overseas job scams. 'If I had been enslaved for a year or two,' she tells the authors, 'I might not be able to believe in humanity anymore.' Advertisement 9 Co-author Ling Li. Courtesy of Ling Li This industry isn't going away, the authors write. It's adapting. It's expanding — even as it faces a crackdown by the Trump administration, which recently designated the Cambodian firm Huione Group what so many already know it to be: a money-laundering operation. Still, much work remains to free women like Alice. In the time it took to read this story, another person somewhere may have just clicked 'Apply Now' on a job that doesn't exist.
Irish Independent
02-07-2025
- Irish Independent
The ‘cyber slaves' forced to scam you
If you, or anyone you know, have fallen victim to an online scam, you're unlikely to have wondered whether the con artists themselves were having a difficult time. Yet, as Ivan Franceschini, Ling Li and Mark Bo show in their fascinating new book Scam, if the perpetrators are operating out of Southeast Asia, there's a high likelihood they'll be tortured themselves if they don't successfully trick enough people out of their data or cash.
Telegraph
25-06-2025
- Telegraph
The Asian ‘cyber slaves' forced to scam you – or face horrific torture
If you, or anyone you know, have fallen victim to an online scam, you're unlikely to have wondered whether the con artists themselves were having a difficult time. Yet, as Ivan Franceschini, Ling Li and Mark Bo show in their fascinating new book Scam, if the perpetrators are operating out of South-east Asia, there's a high likelihood they'll be tortured themselves if they don't successfully trick enough people out of their data or cash. Scam, subtitled Inside Southeast Asia's Cybercrime Compounds, details how hundreds of thousands of people are working in makeshift prisons to commit cyberfraud 'on an industrial scale'. They're victims of 'cyber slavery', a term that sounds like something out of a William Gibson novel, but is depressingly real and horrible. For, over the past decade, criminal gangs from China and Taiwan have set up 'compounds' in Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos and the Philippines, where the regulations and policing around these operations are lax. Here, thousands of workers – most of whom are trafficked from China – are made to work with 10 phones, 17 hours a day, attempting to con people around the world out of their money. In the process, the criminal bosses make billions of dollars, and use some of that money to line the pockets of politicians, police or local communities that might try to stop the operations. The compounds, as Franceschini and co describe them, sound like places of complete misery and terror. Workers who are able to achieve certain targets for their bosses – such as, say, generating more than $10,000 a month through scams – are given rewards such as money, or better food, or even a brief spell of leave from the compound. For those who underperform, however, life becomes 'a nightmare'. Most are tortured, which can range from severe beatings to electric shocks, sexual abuse and fingernail extraction. 'We could hear the screams continuing until midnight,' a Chinese worker who escaped a Cambodian compound tells the authors. 'They [the compound managers] made sure you understand that you do not want to be the next one to end up in the punishment room.' Although these workers are paid a salary, when their work begins they're usually made to sign a document that puts them in significant financial debt to the compound operators, a debt that's then repaid through the conducting of scams. Sometimes workers might be sold onto a different scam company in another country; they might even be sold several times over. They have no say in the matter. As a Ugandan man who'd been trapped in a Myanmar compound explains: 'They just tell you: 'We own you, we bought you… It's takes you back to the ages of the slave trade in Africa.' While a number of press articles have been written about this issue, Scam is one of the first books to provide a comprehensive overview of this alarming criminal industry and its 'annexed humanitarian crisis'. The authors are well placed to provide this, having spent years studying this industry: between 2022 and 2024, Li alone conducted 96 interviews with survivors of the compounds. Yet for such a shocking topic, the book can feel a little academic in its tone; it often reads more like a textbook than the gripping non-fiction it could be. I never felt fully immersed in this world; I wanted more on daily life in the compounds. The quotes from the survivors are just snippets, whereas it would have been more interesting to have an account of someone's entire journey, from being tricked into working at these compounds, to the hell they faced inside and what their captors were like, and onto their eventual escape. Nonetheless, Franceschini and co do provide an excellent breakdown of how hard it is to get out of these operations. The compounds, which are sometimes repurposed office blocks, hotels or casinos, and sometimes entire villages, are largely self-sufficient: they have their own canteens, dormitories, supermarkets, hair salons, pharmacies, even brothels. They're also surrounded by five-metre high walls that have 'high-voltage electricity cables on top and armed sentries monitoring the perimeter… [and] checkpoints every few hundred metres outside'. And even if you do escape all this, it'll be a long time before you're likely to feel safe. Passports, personal phones and other identification documents are taken away from workers when they enter the compound. Local politicians and police in countries such as Myanmar and Cambodia largely turn a blind eye to these operations; as above, they may even themselves benefit financially. Scam quotes one man who escaped a compound in Cambodia and ran to the police, only to realise that they were in the pockets of the compound owners: the latter collected him from the station and then filmed themselves viciously beating him, sending the video to his family to ask for more money, by way of a ransom, in order to secure his release. It's estimated that 120,000 people have been held in such situations in Myanmar, and another 100,000 in Cambodia. Some victims have been kidnapped and sold into the operations; others are willingly brought in from countries such as China, naively believing they're getting a highly-paid job. They might have responded to a dodgy job advert, or been tricked by someone they met online – even on a dating app. In 2025, a few high-profile stories appeared in the Chinese media, about victims from that country who'd been tricked into working at these compounds. It led Beijing to issue an official statement outlining efforts to address the problem, and that compelled the authorities in Myanmar to raid some large compounds and release thousands of trapped workers. Franceschini and co, however, make it clear that the 'industry is here to stay'. There's evidence of scam compounds now appearing in Serbia, Turkey, Georgia, South America, India, and Central and West Africa. These horrible operations, they write, have 'gone global'. ★★★★☆
