A room set up to imitate a Brazilian police station is seen inside a scam compound in O’Smach, Cambodia, just across the border from Surin province in Thailand. The centre was bombed and occupied by the Thai military in December during clashes in the disputed border area. (Photo: Reuters)KAMPOT, Cambodia - Cambodia has closed almost 200 scam ​centres in a crackdown on transnational fraud ‌in recent weeks, a senior government official said, with authorities providing rare access to one centre in a bid to show they are tackling the sophisticated operations targeting people across the globe. Since then, thousands ⁠of scam workers, some of them trafficking victims confined in brutal conditions, have fled compounds in recent weeks seeking to return home, in what Amnesty International has called a “humanitarian crisis”. Cambodia long played down the existence of scam compounds in the country, and ‌previous crackdowns have done ⁠little to stop their spread.

Source: Bangkok Post February 11, 2026 09:05 UTC