PHNOM PENH, Sept 23 (Reuters) – Cambodia will open a global conference on countering cyberfraud on Wednesday, as the government seeks to show it is serious about cracking down on the multibillion-dollar scam industry.
Representatives from more than a dozen countries, including the United States and China, will attend the two-day gathering in Phnom Penh. Cambodian authorities say they have eradicated industrial-scale scam compounds, a claim met with skepticism by some analysts.
Cambodia and other Southeast Asian nations have become hubs for the transnational cyberscam industry, with mostly Chinese-led criminal gangs operating compounds where trafficking victims are detained and coerced into carrying out romance scams, police-impersonation fraud and other schemes.
On Monday and Tuesday, reporters toured sprawling centres shuttered by the government – one housing as many as 20,000 workers. They also viewed materials seized by police, including fake FBI and Chinese police badges used in impersonation schemes.
Under pressure from countries including the US, which estimates that Americans lost more than $10 billion to scammers operating in the region in 2024 alone, Cambodia says it has raided hundreds of compounds and deported hundreds of thousands of people over the past year.
But analysts and opposition figures say the raids have left politically connected figures who allegedly protected the networks untouched, while criminal groups have adapted by breaking into smaller units and moving operations overseas.
The credibility of the crackdown “will depend on whether the Cambodian state is willing to investigate all credible allegations, regardless of wealth, influence or official position,” Mu Sochua, an exiled opposition politician, said in a statement.
(Reporting by Poppy McPherson and Chantha Lach; Editing by Stephen Coates)
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