Cambodia scam centres grow despite crackdown, Amnesty says

PHNOM PENH — Cambodia’s online scam industry appears to be expanding despite a nationwide government crackdown, with Amnesty International reporting a rise in identified scam centres from 53 to 86 over the past year.

The finding challenges Cambodia’s claim that authorities have significantly weakened cybercrime networks that have turned the country into one of Southeast Asia’s major hubs for online fraud and forced-labour scam compounds.

According to Amnesty’s report, released on Monday, the rights group identified at least 86 scam compounds operating across Cambodia as of April, up from 53 a year earlier. It found evidence of state intervention at only 24 sites during the government campaign.

Official claims face scrutiny

The figures stand in contrast to Cambodian government statements that authorities had taken action against more than 250 scam centres nationwide.

Senior Minister Chhay Sinarith, who leads Cambodia’s Commission for Combating Online Scams, previously said authorities had targeted 250 suspected locations since July and shut down 200 of them. He also said enforcement efforts had led to 79 legal cases against nearly 700 alleged ringleaders and associates, while nearly 10,000 scam-centre workers from 23 countries had been repatriated to their countries of origin.

However, Amnesty said the crackdown had failed in key areas, including investigating major criminal networks, closing well-known large compounds and protecting people who escaped or were released from scam centres.

Networks shift to harder-to-detect sites

Crime experts say the apparent expansion points to a change in tactics rather than the collapse of the industry.

Julia Dickson, an associate fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said several crackdowns appeared to be largely performative, with key figures possibly receiving warnings before raids and moving operations elsewhere.

She said recent patterns suggested a shift from large compounds in border areas to smaller sites in urban or residential areas, making them harder for authorities and investigators to detect.

Stephanie Baroud, a criminal intelligence analyst with Interpol’s Human Trafficking and Migrant Smuggling unit, also said scam centres in Cambodia appeared to be fragmenting into smaller networks and spreading into residential areas.

Victims risk being treated as offenders

The report also raised concerns over the treatment of people rescued from or escaping scam compounds.

Although thousands of people appear to have left such sites during the crackdown, Amnesty said many were treated as immigration offenders rather than as potential victims of human trafficking. Survivors often had to rely on charities, local residents and foreign embassies for food, shelter and help returning home.

The rights group warned that weak victim protection could leave survivors vulnerable to being trafficked again.

Regional cybercrime threat grows

Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos have become major centres for online scam operations in Southeast Asia, where transnational criminal groups run fraud schemes targeting victims around the world.

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime has described such networks as “criminal service providers”, saying they sell cybercrime, scamming, money laundering and related services across the region.

Cambodia has sought to strengthen its legal response. In March, Cambodian lawmakers adopted a new law targeting online scam operations, with penalties of up to life imprisonment in the most serious cases involving human trafficking, illegal confinement, violence or death.

But Amnesty’s latest findings suggest that enforcement has not yet dismantled the networks behind the compounds.

Closing a single scam centre, analysts warned, does not necessarily destroy the criminal structure behind it — and operations may simply reappear in new locations under smaller, more concealed forms.