Cambodian authorities have arrested more than 1,000 people in coordinated raids on suspected internet scam centres across the country, police said Wednesday.
According to a report by Agence France-Presse, the arrests were made during a three-day operation that targeted sites in Phnom Penh, the border town of Poipet, and the coastal city of Sihanoukville.
Police reports confirmed that just over 1,000 suspects were detained, with the majority being foreign nationals—including at least 271 Indonesians, 213 Vietnamese, and 75 Taiwanese.
The operation followed a directive from Prime Minister Hun Manet, released to the public on Tuesday, ordering law enforcement and the military “to prevent and crack down on online scams,” warning that those who fail “risk losing their jobs.”
The United Nations has described Southeast Asia as the “ground zero” of scam centres, where criminal operations use romance and business scams to defraud social media users of an estimated US$40 billion annually.
Many individuals who have left scam compounds in the region said they were trafficked or lured under false pretenses. A report published last month by Amnesty International said such abuses in Cambodia are occurring on a “mass scale.”
The rights group identified at least 53 scam compounds in the country where “organised criminal groups carry out human trafficking, forced labour, child labour, torture, deprivation of liberty and slavery.”
In March, Cambodian authorities deported 119 Thai nationals, part of a group of 230 foreign citizens arrested in Poipet during raids on alleged cyber scam centres.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) warned in April that the scam industry has been expanding beyond Southeast Asia, with operations reportedly spreading to South America, Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and some Pacific islands.
