In Cambodia, workers carried out online scams against people worldwide from inside massive fortified buildings they weren't allowed to leave PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- The 33-year-old man, lured to Cambodia with the offer of a receptionist job, endured daily beatings for a month, locked in a dark room somewhere in the Southeast Asian country. He didn't know where he was, but he knew the price of his freedom: $6,000. He had arrived from Ghana in November 2025 with the promise of a $1,000-a-month job — way more than he could make back home.
At a training session he was taught to promote work-from-home “jobs” to people online, dangling the prospect of easy money. He soon realized it was a scam, he said, and wanted out. That's when the beatings began.
For the next month, he said he endured beatings with fists, sometimes a bat and was shocked with tasers until the scam center was raided by Cambodian police in January as part of a nationwide campaign to shut down the criminal operations. Months later, he still cannot grip with his left hand after his wrist was broken during the abuse. Online scam operations have flourished in Cambodia, as well as in Myanmar and Laos, since the COVID-19 pandemic, a multibillion dollar industry where workers carried out web-based scams from inside massive fortified complexes, living in dormitories they weren't allowed to leave.
Some came knowing they were signing up for something illegal. But many, like the Ghanaian man, were baited with false promises of high-paying jobs through complex human trafficking webs. Cambodia was home to at least 182 confirmed scam locations, according to data collected by CyberScamMonitor, a watchdog that tracks them, though it has evidence of roughly 300.
Facing international pressure in late 2025 after the death of a South Korean student forced into such an operation and the U.S. indictment of the Chinese-born founder of a Cambodian conglomerate behind a massive cryptocurrency scam, Cambodia kicked its crackdown into high gear. But even as it closed down dozens of scam centers, Cambodia has not prosecuted the criminal operatives behind the schemes or the elites who helped them flourish by providing financing, facilities and connections to the highest echelons of Cambodia's government — including senior politicians and relatives of Prime Minister Hun Manet, according to the U.S. Congress, which has called for sanctions.
After the raids ramped up in January, tens of thousands of former workers ended up in the capital, Phnom Penh, many sleeping in the streets. Some faced police harassment and arbitrary detentions. More than 10 months later, hundreds remain stranded.
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