The people who log on to work in an anonymous skyscraper in the centre of the Cambodian port city of Sihanoukville have one aim in mind — defrauding internet users around the world out of as much cash as they can. Many start the day with a script designed to lure potential targets by promising love and riches. The system is known as “pig butchering”, where fraudsters cultivate victims’ trust over time before swindling them.
Such scams are at the heart of a multibillion-dollar global industry designed to cheat millions of people through romance, cryptocurrency and investment fraud. The scams have transformed Sihanoukville, once a sleepy coastal destination for backpackers and honeymooners, into a mecca of cyber crime, with criminal networks brazenly operating out of casinos, hotels and apartment blocks.
“Cambodia is the epicentre,” said Jacob Sims, a fellow at Harvard University’s Asia Center and a senior adviser on transnational cyber crime at Inca Digital. “This is the single largest economic engine in the entire Mekong subregion.”
Last week, Cambodia arrested Chinese-born Chen Zhi, the chair of Prince Group and alleged kingpin of one of Asia’s largest criminal cyber scam organisations, and sent him to China. The US and the UK imposed sanctions on Prince Group in October; the US said Americans lost at least $10bn in 2024 to scam operations in the region.
Cambodia’s scam industry was “deeply enmeshed in the elite political economy of the country”, said Sims, who estimated there were 250 to 350 scam compounds in the country. While local officials did not control the scam operations, “they are effectively providing a criminalised political economy that allows these syndicates to operate with absolute impunity”, he said.