Victims and villains – Inside Cambodia’s scam industry

Everyone will have encountered scamming before: A message from an unknown person, a little bit suspicious, but also charming and promising.

What might seem harmless is actually a billion-dollar business. In Cambodia, the government is now cracking down on scam centers. These scam centers basically operate like the mafia and run large-scale scams in huge halls or factories. Most of the scammers are recruited from abroad, like Indonesia. They claim to have been forced to work there, and that they themselves are victims, with some even claiming to have been tortured. In some cases, however, even the embassies from their native countries are skeptical whether this is true. Instead, they believe that many scammers join the teams voluntarily.