Cambodia Opens Global Anti-Scam Summit as Crackdown Faces Scrutiny

Cambodia will open a two-day global conference on countering cyberfraud in Phnom Penh on Wednesday, as the government seeks to demonstrate that it is serious about dismantling the multibillion-dollar scam industry operating within its borders.

Representatives from more than a dozen countries, including the United States and China, are expected to attend the gathering. Cambodian authorities say they have eradicated industrial-scale scam compounds, a claim that has drawn skepticism from some analysts.

Cambodia and other Southeast Asian nations have become hubs for the transnational cyberscam industry, where mostly Chinese-led criminal gangs run compounds that detain and coerce trafficking victims into carrying out romance scams, police-impersonation fraud and other schemes.

On Monday and Tuesday, reporters toured sprawling centres shuttered by the government, including one that had housed as many as 20,000 workers. They also viewed materials seized by police, among them fake FBI and Chinese police badges used in impersonation schemes.

Under pressure from countries including the United States, which estimates that Americans lost more than $10 billion to scammers operating in the region in 2024 alone, Cambodia says it has raided hundreds of compounds and deported hundreds of thousands of people over the past year.

But analysts and opposition figures say the raids have left politically connected figures who allegedly protected the networks untouched, while criminal groups have adapted by breaking into smaller units and moving operations overseas.

The credibility of the crackdown "will depend on whether the Cambodian state is willing to investigate all credible allegations, regardless of wealth, influence or official position," Mu Sochua, an exiled opposition politician, said in a statement.