Cambodia hosts anti-scam summit, seeking to showcase crackdown

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.