Cybercrime syndicates operating in Cambodia have grown so large and politically connected that the industry now rivals the country’s formal economy, with online scam networks accused of corrupting officials, enslaving workers, and defrauding victims around the world, The Wall Street Journal reported. 

Legal filings, Cambodian corporate records, and sanctions actions in the United States and other countries now indicate just how deeply scam networks have infiltrated Cambodia’s ruling elite, including through business figures and politically-connected tycoons tied to hotels, casinos, and real-estate projects used in alleged fraud operations, the newspaper said. 

The scale of the industry is visible even in central Phnom Penh, where a skyscraper is being built by a company sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury for alleged links to scam operations. The Treasury said the developer was owned by Xu Aimin, a China-born casino mogul, and the company later changed ownership and was renamed after Xu stepped down, the Journal said. 

A report cited by U.S. authorities and referenced by the Journal estimated annual revenue from Cambodia-based scam syndicates at as much as $19 billion, equivalent to nearly 40 percent of the country’s gross domestic product and larger than its garment sector. Americans alone lost $10 billion to online fraud originating from Southeast Asia in 2024, according to U.S. government data cited in the report. 

Under mounting pressure from the United States, China, and others, Cambodia in recent months launched a nationwide crackdown that it said would eliminate online scam activity by the end of April. The campaign has triggered hundreds of raids and the release of workers from compounds, but has also pushed some larger operations to disperse into smaller sites that are harder to track, according to the WSJ.

Cambodian authorities have raided more than 250 scam centers, opened cases against about 750 alleged ringleaders, deported around 48,000 foreign workers, and seen more than 200,000 others leave the country, according to officials cited by the Journal. Yet, aside from one prominent suspect extradited to China, several alleged kingpins sanctioned by the United States or wanted abroad have not been publicly charged or arrested in Cambodia, the report said. 

The Journal said the crackdown has exposed the scale and sophistication of the scam economy, including compounds with rows of computers, detailed victim dossiers, and scripted fraud operations targeting people in multiple countries. Former scam workers told the newspaper that some operations have since moved into city high-rises, while online ads for apparent scam jobs have continued to appear on Telegram. 

Read more at The Wall Street Journal