BangkokPost/ReutersFeb 11
Cambodia has closed almost 200 scam centers in a crackdown on transnational fraud in recent weeks, a senior government official said, with authorities providing rare access to one center in a bid to show they are tackling the sophisticated operations targeting people across the globe. “There are about 190 locations that we have sealed off now,” Chhay Sinarith, the deputy chief of Cambodia’s Secretariat of the Commission for Combating Online Scams, told Reuters in Phnom Penh this week before the visit to a sprawling complex in Kampot. Chhay said 173 senior crime figures linked to the centers had been arrested and 11,000 workers deported in a campaign that began late last year after the United States indicted and then Cambodia extradited China-born tycoon Chen Zhi in the biggest international move so far against the criminal networks. 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”. At the Kampot compound, reporters were shown large work rooms with rows of computer stations and desks strewn with documents instructing how to scam Thai victims, as well as studio booths for phone calls and a fake Indian police station. Authorities said there were no arrests made inside the Kampot casino complex known as My Casino. Workers fled after the detention of alleged boss and tycoon Ly Kuong, and police said they lacked the manpower to detain those leaving. Read more at: https://www.bangkokpost.com/world/3195040/?fbclid=IwY2xjawP5GixleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZAwzNTA2ODU1MzE3MjgAAR5xo9mS-b59-25jQfPrFakDAYz0ZeKRQvi6BXnogm1sAt5d73SIqu8NibK-PQ_aem_9lLRmTn3w5kuE3t2nVFpzA.
