On a desk inside a room at one of Cambodia’s notorious scam compounds lies a script with an in-depth character sketch of a fictitious woman who would be used to target Americans.
It depicts a character named Mila who had earned a lot of money on the gold options trading market. But she lost her husband to leukemia when their daughter was just a baby – thus setting up her tragic story that will help trap unsuspecting foreigners into parting with their money.
The fraud is so elaborate, it even constructs a vivid backstory – memories of her childhood, including getting bullied by other girls, and her parents sending her off to South Africa to live with her uncle in order to be in a healthier environment.
These scam compounds house rooms filled with desks for at least 30 people, each padded with noise-cancelling foam, the Associated Press reports.
Motivational messages written in Chinese – such as "money coming from everywhere" – adorn the walls while documents found on the premises offer tips on how to lure people into making a fake investment. FBI data released last week shows that Americans lost near $21bn to scams in 2025 alone.
What began as a small-time fraud operation run illegally from apartments have now expanded into a massive industry in Cambodia.
Police say foreign nationals are kidnapped and tortured into working long hours to lure unsuspecting targets from countries all across the world in these fortified, industrial-scale complexes.
The Cambodian police have arrested over 121 foreign nationals during raids on these online operations in the coastal province of Preah Sihanouk as a part of their ongoing nationwide crackdown on cyber fraud.
At a shuttered scam compound just inside the Cambodian town of O’Smach near the Thailand border, remnants of the vast operation reveal the meticulous planning behind the fraud. The buildings are riddled with bullet holes, their floors strewn with collapsed ceiling panels, shattered glass, and debris. The workers and their handlers fled when border conflict escalated between Thailand and Cambodia last year. A ceasefire was reached in December after three weeks of fighting, but Thailand has maintained control over the area, triggering backlash from Phnom Penh.
Inside the buildings, replicas of Vietnamese banks, Australian police stations, and Chinese police uniforms were arranged in booths designed to deceive victims.
On the desks inside a four-story office building were snacks eaten by the previous users, as well as scripts and notes in Chinese on each aspect of the scam. American SIM cards were scattered on the floor as well as what appeared to be fake American dollar bills.
One such scam compound, named "O'Smach Resort Complex", comprises 157 buildings, 29 of which were used for setting up scam companies and their offices. The rest include massive dorm complexes, luxurious accommodations, and three-storey villas.
The clampdown comes days after Cambodia's parliament passed the first law dedicated to targeting scam centres accused of bilking international victims out of billions of dollars.
The Cambodian government has long played down the existence of such compounds, and previous crackdowns have done little to stop their spread. Recent findings show how these massive compounds worked as scam centres where fake police stations and banks were created to trick people, mostly North Americans, into bogus investment schemes to extort money.
The industry is closely involved in human trafficking, as foreign nationals are employed to run romance and cryptocurrency scams, often after being recruited with false job offers and then forced to work in conditions of near-slavery.
Scam compounds have mushroomed across Southeast Asia since the pandemic, with industrial-scale organisations operating out of border regions of Thailand and Cambodia.
The latest estimates from the UN office on Human Rights are that around 300,000 workers are caught up in the industry regionally.
Cambodian authorities have accused Thailand of using “so-called scam centre concerns as a pretext for actions that undermine Cambodia’s territorial sovereignty”.
The Thai military estimates at least 10,000 people were living in the compound owned by Cambodian politician Ly Yong Phat, who faced US sanctions for rights abuses in the very same complex.
The O’Smach area was flagged in the 2024 US Trafficking in Persons report, which cited accounts of online scam compounds in the town operating with forced labour.
These lucrative scam industries have popped up in other Southeast Asian countries such as Laos, Myanmar, and the Philippines in the last decade. In Cambodia alone, online fraud schemes are estimated to generate $12.5bn annually, according to the United States Institute of Peace.
After weathering months of international pressure, prime minister Hun Manet announced that the industry would be completely shut down by the end of April, saying it was destroying Cambodia's economy and reputation. Since then, police teams have raided dozens of suspected scam compounds and arrested hundreds of foreign nationals.
The law introduced last week was "strict like the fishing net, strict to ensure we don’t have the online scams anymore in Cambodia, strict in order to serve the interest of the Cambodian nation and people," said justice minister Keut Rith. He said the law will aide the "cleaning operation" ongoing across the country and ensure the centres do not return after crackdown.
Under the law, the convict will be sentenced to up to five years in prison and fined of up to $125,000. Sentences for those convicted of scams conducted by gangs or against many victims can be up to 10 years in prison and as much as $250,000 in fines. It also outlines penalties for those convicted of money laundering, gathering victims' data, or recruiting scammers.
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