PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Cambodia says it has effectively wiped out the sprawling online scam compounds that turned the country into one of Southeast Asia’s most notorious cyberfraud hubs.
The numbers behind the crackdown are enormous.
From July 2025 through August 20, 2026, Cambodian authorities investigated 793 suspected locations, carried out crackdowns at 624 sites and detained nearly 30,000 people from 39 nationalities, according to Senior Minister Chhay Sinarith, who heads the government’s Ad-Hoc Commission for Combating Online Scams.
Authorities also said 58,266 foreign nationals were rescued and deported, while 3,477 suspects from 29 nationalities were placed in pretrial detention. Another 855 suspects were being pursued under court-issued arrest warrants.
It is one of the biggest anti-cybercrime operations Cambodia has ever announced.
But there is a major catch.
Cambodia says the compounds are gone. The scams may not be.
Chhay Sinarith told representatives from nearly 50 foreign diplomatic missions and international organizations that large-scale online scam operations had been brought under control and that there were no longer online scam compounds operating in the country.
Yet the Cambodian government’s own statement acknowledged that criminal syndicates have changed tactics.
Rather than operating from the huge, highly visible compounds that became synonymous with Cambodia’s scam industry, some groups are believed to have decentralized their operations — hiding inside guesthouses, condominiums, rental homes, vehicles and even coffee shops.
Authorities say investigations into those smaller operations are continuing.
That distinction has become crucial.
Cambodia may have broken up much of the physical infrastructure associated with industrial-scale scam centers, but proving that the criminal networks behind them have disappeared is far more difficult.
Reuters said it had not independently verified the government’s claim that the compound industry had been eradicated. Transnational-crime experts have similarly warned against equating the disappearance of large compounds with the destruction of the financial, criminal and political networks that allowed them to operate.
Why Cambodia became a center of the global scam economy
For years, Cambodia has been identified alongside parts of Myanmar and Laos as a major base for industrial-scale online fraud.
The operations frequently involve fake cryptocurrency investments, romance scams and other schemes designed to build trust with victims before convincing them to transfer large sums of money.
But there is another group of victims behind the computer screens.
Thousands of people from around the world have allegedly been recruited through fake job advertisements, transported to scam compounds and forced to defraud strangers online under threats, violence or confinement.
AP reported that trafficked workers have often been forced to operate romance and cryptocurrency scams under conditions resembling slavery.
The scale of the wider fraud economy is staggering.
A July 2026 assessment by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimated that online scams caused between US$88.3 billion and US$114.1 billion in losses during 2025 across East Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand.
The UN warned that criminal syndicates are evolving rapidly, using sophisticated financial networks, cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence and other technology to stay ahead of law enforcement.
Cambodia’s crackdown reached beyond ordinary suspects
Cambodian authorities say the campaign has also targeted officials accused of facilitating or protecting illegal operations.
According to the government, the country’s Anti-Corruption Unit pursued four cases resulting in the arrests of 15 senior officials and law-enforcement officers, including senior police, immigration and government personnel.
Authorities also acted against Cambodia’s casino sector, which has repeatedly faced scrutiny over alleged links between gambling properties and online scam operations.
The government says action was taken against 27 casinos, with licenses revoked from 18 and suspended for nine others.
Two prominent Chinese-born businessmen were also swept into the broader campaign.
Chen Zhi, chairman of Prince Holding Group and a naturalized Cambodian citizen, was extradited to China in January 2026 after previously being sanctioned by the United States and United Kingdom.
In April, Cambodia extradited Li Xiong, the Chinese-born former chairman of Huione Group, who Chinese authorities accuse of involvement in a major transnational gambling and fraud network.
Cambodia’s parliament also approved legislation in March specifically targeting online scam operations, introducing penalties that can reach life imprisonment in the most serious cases.
Human-rights groups remain skeptical
Despite the huge arrest and closure numbers, Amnesty International says there is reason to treat declarations of victory cautiously.
In a June 2026 investigation, Amnesty said it had identified 86 scam compounds and found evidence of government intervention at only 24 of them, while another seven experienced mass releases or escapes.
The organization interviewed 73 survivors from 16 countries who said they had been held in compounds during the crackdown.
Amnesty said all 73 appeared to meet internationally recognized definitions of trafficking victims, yet none had been formally recognized as trafficking victims by authorities.
The organization has also documented allegations of forced labor, torture, sexual violence and other serious abuses associated with Cambodia’s scam industry.
Those findings predated Cambodia’s latest wave of enforcement, meaning conditions may have changed significantly since then. But they explain why rights groups want independent evidence before declaring the industry defeated.
There are also signs that the crackdown has produced genuine disruption.
Michael Brosowski of Vietnam-based anti-trafficking organization Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation told AP that calls from trafficking victims had fallen dramatically as Cambodian compounds closed — although such calls had not stopped completely.
The real test comes next
Cambodia’s latest numbers show enforcement on a scale that would have been difficult to imagine only a few years ago.
Hundreds of sites have been targeted. Tens of thousands of people have been detained or removed from the country. Casinos have lost licenses. Senior officials have been arrested. Alleged major players have been extradited.
But the government has also effectively acknowledged the next phase of the battle.
The giant compounds may be disappearing.
The criminals may simply be getting smaller, quieter and harder to find.
That means the most important measure of Cambodia’s crackdown may no longer be how many fortified buildings authorities can shut down — but whether investigators can dismantle the money laundering systems, trafficking networks, technological infrastructure and protection mechanisms that allowed the scam economy to become so powerful in the first place.
Cambodia will face another international spotlight on September 23-24, 2026, when it is scheduled to host an international conference on combating online scams, bringing together governments, law-enforcement agencies, financial institutions, technology companies and other organizations.
By then, the biggest question may no longer be whether Cambodia’s notorious scam compounds have been closed.
It will be whether the multibillion-dollar criminal industry behind them has actually been broken — or merely forced out of sight.
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