Abandoned compounds and stranded victims: Cambodia's crackdown on scam syndicates – Transcript

00:01The bustle of a border town. This is Bavet. It lies on the Cambodian side of a major checkpoint with Vietnam. Amid the chaos and the traffic, there's one thing that stands out.

00:14Advertising for online gambling is everywhere despite it being illegal in Cambodia. The signs point to something larger and hidden in the casinos, apartment complexes, and business parks.

00:29The human trafficking, the violence and torture, the illegal gambling, and the sophisticated scamming operations targeting people all around the world. And it's not just here, but all over the country.

00:43Vast networks of scamming crimes working both in the shadows and out in the open. >> Behind the bright lights of Cambodia's cities and border towns is an industry built on deception and fear. This country has become ground zero for global scamming, where victims are trafficked into compounds and forced to target others online. Authorities here say they're cracking down, but these

01:09networks have deep roots. I'm here to try and find out if that crackdown is real, peer inside the criminal economy, and meet the people still trying to escape it. >> First, the crackdown. The strong message out of Cambodia right now is that it's had enough.

01:27A criminal industry that's been generating billions of dollars inside the country has become the target of raids, sanctions, and new laws amid rising pressure domestically and from countries like China and the US.

01:44The government brought us to the A7 country and resort to prove it. It's a facility alleged to have been running scams before police raided it earlier this year. With dozens of armed personnel on hand, we're offered a tour of the site and what's left over from the activities here.

02:03In buildings like this, workers run online fraud, often romance or investment scams, fake crypto schemes, or online gambling-related deception. Inside this scamming compound, an array of evidence of the criminality that was occurring here up to a short time ago.

02:22What's most interesting, perhaps, among the evidence is this array of ID cards that have been left here, mostly Chinese individuals with all of their personal details, as well as countless credit cards, housing registries, boarding passes, not to mention food and medicine, all of which has been abandoned as police raided this complex.

02:44Some workers are willing participants. Many others are trafficked through fake job offers, have their passports taken, are confined, beaten, or forced to meet revenue targets.

02:57The entire complex has been completely trashed. More than 2,200 people inside, mostly from China, were released. For now, authorities say they don't know who owns the land or who was responsible for running scams out of this complex.

03:15Investigations are still ongoing. At another estate, also in Bavet, 198 townhouses found to be housing scam activities. Soundproof rooms where police impersonators would target victims overseas.

03:33And some of the scripts they'd use to manipulate their marks. Bedrooms packed with mattresses and the filthy conditions those entrapped endured. "This is just the start of the response," the provincial governor told us.

04:10>> So, how did Cambodia become a hub of scam activities? Experts say the country had all the right ingredients, casino zones, weak oversight, border economies, and old smuggling routes, among others.

04:27>> The scammers will look at the the uh the weakest links. Look at countries with most vulnerable countries that they can influence, they can buy their way. And it happened to be a to be Myanmar.

04:42It happens to be Laos. It hap- happens to be Cambodia. >> During COVID, especially, online gambling and digital fraud flourished as casino tourism took a hit. The industry then grew into one of the country's most powerful illicit economies.

05:00>> So, it's really been in the past decade that China-linked transnational criminal organizations have emerged as the most powerful crime groups in Southeast Asia. And it's only in the last 5 years that Chinese transnational organized criminal groups have transformed mainland Southeast Asia into the global apex for online scams.

05:22Southeast Asia is now really the only space in the world where you have massive industrial-scale compounds in the hundreds. Um and in some cases massive scam cities that feature populations in excess of 30, 40, 50,000 people um that are engaged in online scams.

05:41It's also currently the only place where you can see mass numbers of individuals being trafficked into circumstances of forced criminality and modern slavery in types in inside of these compounds.

05:55>> One of those was Muhammad Fadli. He was among dozens of Indonesians camped outside his country's embassy in the capital hoping to secure a flight home. He told us that he and others were routinely beaten while locked in a scam operation in Bavet.

06:39>> This is one of the busiest areas in Phnom Penh in the evening. It's a place where regular people come to jog and to exercise. And as they pass by, they pass others who are in despair.

06:51Indonesians here tonight, dozens of them, most of them victims of scamming networks, left destitute, left homeless, some of them who have been tortured, all of them hoping to get home.

07:05>> It's estimated that about 300,000 foreigners have fled Cambodia since the crackdowns and raids began over the past few months. It's a shocking number. Many more are still stuck in limbo, unable to afford flights and lacking documentation after being trafficked into the country.

07:26>> Some were fleeing into the jungle, some were hiding in different towns. A lot of ended up sleeping on the streets of Phnom Penh. Uh you have several thousand people from just there across the African continent. You have people from Indonesia, from the Philippines, from Vietnam, from China, everywhere in the world is now involved in scams. So, they're all coming to Cambodia and there's an enormous amount of human trafficking. These people are receiving

07:52no support whatsoever. They're just sleeping on the street desperate for food, shelter, and a way home. >> Abdul, a Ugandan school teacher, is also stranded. He told us his harrowing story from a safe house.

08:09He was smuggled from Bangkok to Lao and eventually into Cambodia, forced into a scamming operation. He was originally told he'd be doing data entry, but then >> They told me, "Yeah, you're you're you're here to scam.

08:24We are scammers. This is a scamming company, but we shall take you through uh through the probation to make you know how to scam, how we do our things, how everything you suddenly you everything. >> After about 1 month locked inside, police shut down the operation and he fled back to the city.

08:43>> So, ever since then every single day is a nightmare. Sleeping outside you don't have food. You're in the country illegally. You have no visa. You have no food. You have nowhere to run to. This experience has been the worst in my entire life cuz me coming this me coming to Southeast Asia, I promised my family, I promised my people let me go try to make change make things change and let

09:08me try to go find a good life. But what I what I what I what I found out >> >> really it was it is far away from from my expectations. I feel disappointed in myself. I feel uh I feel I let my people down. Uh I'm now done. I have nothing on me.

09:27Everything is now a mess. >> We wanted to understand the scale of the infrastructure built specifically for the scam industry. And everywhere along Cambodia's eastern flank you can find it.