^^ UPDATE
Cambodia deports 19 Japanese cybercrime scam suspects
Police in Cambodia say 19 Japanese men detained in January on suspicion of taking part in phone and online scams have been deported to their homeland
Sopheng Cheang
1 hour ago
Nineteen Japanese men detained in Cambodia in January on suspicion of participating in phone and online scams were deported to their homeland on Tuesday, police said.

The group boarded a chartered flight organized by the Japanese government at Phnom Penh International Airport, Cambodian National Police spokesperson Gen. Chhay Kim Khouen said.

Tokyo police obtained arrest warrants for the 19 Japanese on suspicion of running phone scams from Cambodia targeting people in Japan, Japanese public broadcaster NHK reported on Friday.

NHK said Cambodian authorities searched the men’s hotel rooms and “discovered a list of Japanese citizens believed to be targets in a fraud scheme.”

The 19 were taken into custody in the southern city of Sihanoukville on Jan. 24 and sent to the capital, Phnom Penh, where they were held after being investigated by the Interior Ministry.

A Cambodian official at Phnom Penh International Airport who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media said the men were taking a chartered Malaysia Airlines flight to Kuala Lumpur, where they would transfer to a waiting Japanese plane.
He said a group of Japanese policemen came from Japan to escort the 19 men home.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/poli ... 17787.html

TAIWAN
Fri, Apr 28, 2023
Bill addresses trafficking after Cambodia incidents
By Hsieh Chun-lin and Jake Chung / Staff reporter, with staff writer
The legislature’s Judiciary and Organic Laws and Statutes Committee yesterday approved the first reading of amendments that would increase penalties for attempts to recruit people to commit crimes abroad, after a scheme that lured jobseekers to Cambodia received significant media coverage last year.

The proposed changes of the Organized Crime Prevention Act (組織犯罪防治條例), drafted by the Executive Yuan, stipulate fines of up to NT$20 million (US$651,254) and prison terms of up to seven years, while stipulating higher penalties when the people targeted are underage.

Alleged members of the Four Seas Gang and the Bamboo Union Gang who are suspected of involvement in human trafficking to Cambodia are escorted by Criminal Investigation Bureau officials on March 3.
Photo: CNA
The amendments were drafted after investigators found that a trafficking ring had lured Taiwanese to Cambodia by promising them high-paying jobs, but forced them to participate in telecommunications fraud, while subjecting them to sexual exploitation. Instances of organ harvesting were also reported.
https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan ... 2003798759

^^ UPDATE: POLICE CORRUPTION IN TAIWAN
Fri, May 05, 2023

Police chief detained in corruption, bribery probe
COLLUSION: The police chief allegedly passed personal information to criminal gangs, which kidnapped people for forced labor and used their details to launder money
By Jason Pan / Staff reporter

A police chief was yesterday detained on corruption charges for allegedly colluding with criminals who engaged in human trafficking to Cambodia, the Taipei Police Department said.

Police yesterday handed Ningxia Road Police Station Chief Yeh Yu-hsin (葉育忻) two major demerits, dismissing him from his post in Taipei’s Datong District (大同) Police Precinct.

Corruption, major misconduct and contravention of the law while working as a civil servant can receive punishment of two major demerits under the Police Personnel Management Act (警察人員人事條例), which would lead to dismissal, Civil Service Performance Evaluation Act (公務人員考績法) provisions stipulate.

Public prosecutors said they have sufficient evidence of Yeh’s corruption.

Yeh faces charges for receiving bribes, as he allegedly received money in tether cryptocurrency tokens worth NT$1 million (US$32,609), and charges of forgery, illegal access and use of personal information, and for leaking confidential files.
https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan ... 2003799188

INDIA
Human trafficking racket busted in Punjab’s Pathankot, 2 held
By HT Correspondent, Pathankot
May 15, 2023 08:17 PM IST
The Pathankot Police successfully rescued two individuals who were held captive in Cambodia after falling victim to an illegal travel scam

The victims, Paramjit Saini and Sachin Saini were subjected to a harrowing experience before their safe return to India on May 13, 2023. The police have also apprehended the culprits involved in this illegal travel scam.

The investigation was initiated when Vijay Saini, son of Mangat Ram and a resident of Panjupar village in Pathankot filed a written complaint at police station division No.2. Vijay Saini revealed that his brothers, Paramjit Saini, and Sachin Saini, along with three other individuals, including Tajinder Kumar, resident of Panjupar, had conspired to travel abroad illegally. They had engaged the services of Manpreet Singh alias Mani Suro Kala, an agent from Sarih village, Dehlon in Ludhiana, to facilitate their travel to New Zealand on a work permit, with each victim paying a sum of ₹15 lakh.

Senior superintendent of police (SSP) Harkamal Preet Singh Khakh said, “As per the investigation, it has been discovered that Manpreet Singh alias Mani coordinated with Tajinder Kumar, who had been residing in Greece for the past four years, to arrange the travel. The agent booked Paramjit Saini and Sachin Saini’s tickets from Delhi to Thailand on April 18, 2023. The victims carried ₹50,000 each for the agent, with Paramjit Saini arranging the money through his aunt’s son in Australia and Sachin Saini obtaining it from a relative.”

“The situation took a dark turn when the agent Mani demanded an additional ₹15 lakh from each victim. Distressed by this development, Paramjit Saini and Sachin Saini informed Vijay Saini of the agent’s demands and mentioned that Lakhbir Singh, son of Jaswant Singh, a resident of Sarih police station, Dehlon district, Ludhiana, was supposed to receive the money in Jalandhar,” the SSP said.

“Upon thorough investigation, it was confirmed that Tajinder Kumar, Manpreet Singh alias Mani, and Lakhbir Singh had planned to cheat Paramjit Saini and Sachin Saini by illegally obtaining money and trapping them in Cambodia until a ransom of ₹ 30 lakh was paid for their release. Consequently, on May 5, 2023, the Pathankot Police registered a case (number 65/2023) under various sections, including 420, 346, 120-B, and Section 13 of the Punjab Travel Professional Regulation Act 2014, at Police Station Division No. 02 Pathankot.

“The diligent efforts of the Pathankot Police led to the arrest of Lakhbir Singh on May 5, 2023. Following his interrogation, the police apprehended the father of agent Manpreet Singh alias Mani, based on the evidence obtained. On May 19, 2023, both accused individuals were formally charged,” he added.
https://www.hindustantimes.com/cities/c ... 63851.html

General Khieu Sopheak: 6 requests to rescue 6 trafficked foreigners received in 24H

Cambodia News (Phnom Penh): Between 3:00pm on 18 May 2023 to 3:00pm of 19 May 2023, General Khieu Sopheak, Secretary of State and spokesman for the Ministry of Interior, said that Cambodian authorities received six more requests to rescue six foreigners.

General Khieu Sopheak stated that as of 19 May 2023 the Ministry of the Interior has on file:
1: 885 cases involving 2,210 people.
2. 852 preliminarily investigated and 294 cases closed (in which 1,263 people were found, 132 suspects arrested, 5 companies closed).
3: 33 cases under ongoing investigation operations.

Flexxman wrote: ↑Mon Feb 13, 2023 11:35 pm
“No one should underestimate the revenge component of this decision,” said Robertson, adding that VOD had been at the forefront of exposing official complicity in such cyber-scam syndicates, which have made Cambodia “synonymous with the latest, sinister form of 21st century slavery”.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/ ... roadcaster

Cambodian journalist wins award for cyber-scam stories
Mech Dara receives award from US Secretary of State for human trafficking coverage.
Alex Willemyns for RFA
2023.06.15
Cambodian journalist Mech Dara was presented with an award by the U.S. State Department on Thursday for his reporting about the prevalence of cyber-scam slavery compounds in his country.

Dara was one of eight journalists, activists and community leaders presented with a Hero Award by Secretary of State Antony Blinken at a morning ceremony at the State Department in Washington to mark the release of the 2023 U.S. Trafficking in Persons report.

A former reporter with The Cambodia Daily, Phnom Penh Post and Voice of Democracy, Dara led coverage of Cambodia’s scam-compound problem, with locals and foreigners alike being forced to work – under threat of violence – as the perpetrators of online scams targeting people across the world.

US Trafficking in Persons report 2023
Dara’s reporting on compounds in Phnom Penh and the coastal casino town of Sihanoukville led Cambodian authorities, who initially denied the existence of the compounds, to acknowledge the problem and launch periodic raids on buildings housing the operations.

The compounds are typically run by Chinese crime syndicates with alleged ties to local Cambodian authorities, but one report by Al Jazeera even linked government senator Kok An and Hun To, the nephew of Prime Minister HE, to some of the operations.

Cambodia’s cyber-scam slavery problem has since been covered by news outlets around the world, including Al Jazeera’s 101 East, The Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, BBC, ABC Australia and Vice.

Cindy Dyer, the U.S. ambassador-at-large for the office to monitor and combat trafficking in persons, praised Dara’s extensive reporting for uncovering the issue and bringing it to international attention.

The award, she said, recognized “his courageous reporting on human trafficking for the purpose of forced criminality in Cambodia, which led to greater public awareness of, and improvement within, the Cambodian government’s anti-trafficking response.”
https://www.rfa.org/english/news/cambod ... 43100.html

Threats force anti-trafficking NGO director out of Cambodia
Jacob Sims spoke out about kingdom's booming slave-based scam industry
JACK BROOK, Contributing writerJune 24, 2023 12:09 JST

PHNOM PENH -- The director of a major anti-human trafficking campaign group in Cambodia has been prevented from returning to the country by his organization after he publicly spoke out against the kingdom's booming online fraud industry based on slave labour.

The U.S.-based International Justice Mission directed its then-country director Jacob Sims not to return to the South-East Asian nation since last July because of "credible warnings about various potential threats," the non-governmental organization told Nikkei Asia.

The alleged threats emerged shortly after Sims appeared in an explosive Al-Jazeera documentary "Forced to Scam: Cambodia's Cyber Slaves." The program highlighted the scale of an industry that the international police organization Interpol warned this month has spread from Cambodia to become "a global human trafficking crisis."

Sims told Nikkei that he had left the country on a business trip before the documentary was released on July 14 last year. But IJM has not judged it safe for Sims to return to Cambodia since then, according to four people not affiliated with IJM but familiar with his situation.

"Thousands of people in Cambodia are being forced to work in scamming compounds," Sims said in the documentary. "There's reports of people being beaten, they are told if they call the police they are going to get beaten, they are threatened to be sold at what appear to be marketplaces where humans are sold for thousands of dollars to conduct these scamming operations."

Al-Jazeera did not respond to requests for comment. This month, IJM announced it would be replacing Sims with a new Cambodia country director.
Full article: https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Socie ... f-Cambodia

Tue, Aug 22, 2023
MOFA censured over trafficking
REPORT FINDINGS: The ministry’s handling of job scam trafficking cases was lax, while a victim was tortured more due to a video the Kaohsiung prosecutors’ office released
By Liu Tzu-hsuan / Staff reporter

The Control Yuan has censured the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) and the Kaohsiung District Prosecutors’ Office over the handling of cases involving Taiwanese who were imprisoned in Cambodia after being caught up in human trafficking job scams.

Over the past few years, there have been reports of Taiwanese who were tortured, imprisoned, threatened with organ harvesting and coerced into engaging in fraudulent activities after accepting part-time jobs in Cambodia and other countries.

Control Yuan members Yeh Ta-hua (葉大華) and Chi Hui-jung (紀惠容) submitted an investigation report on the matter, which was passed by the Control Yuan’s Committee on Domestic and Ethnic Affairs on Tuesday last week.

The prosecutors’ office contravened the principle that a prosecutorial investigation must not be made public when it released a video related to a job scam case in August last year, Yeh told a news conference in Taipei yesterday.

The video was released while the victim was still imprisoned in Cambodia, and as a result, they were tortured more severely, she said.

As for the ministry, it failed to fully grasp the human trafficking situation in Cambodia, Yeh said.

The ministry’s emergency call center received 643 calls for help related to overseas job scams from 2021 to June this year, she said.

In addition, 682 people in Cambodia, 194 in Thailand and 124 in Myanmar sought help from Taiwanese offices abroad, she said.

YouTuber Hao-pang Bump (好棒Bump) posted videos accusing the ministry of refusing to help a job scam victim in March last year, Yeh said, adding that the ministry only asked the National Police Agency and other agencies to help handle the issue in May last year, which “showed a lack of activeness and responsiveness.”
https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan ... 2003805109

08/30/2023, 18.27
SOUTHEAST ASIA
Hundreds of thousands of enslaved online workers in Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Bangkok releases its first comprehensive report on people forced to work for online scams. Highly qualified workers are among the victims are trafficked from places as far as Kenya, Brazil, and Turkey. War-torn regions and special economic zones are ideal places for these activities.

Bangkok (AsiaNews) – About 120,000 people in Myanmar and 100,000 in Cambodia might be involved in online scams under duress, this according to the first report by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on the matter. AsiaNews too has covered the issue.

The UN agency notes that hundreds of irregular migrants lured by job offers work crammed into offices full of computers, carrying out online scams on social media with unsuspecting netizens. Often these men and women are victims of human trafficking, held against their will in such worksites, unable to go out.

This activity has flourished since the COVID-19 pandemic broke out around the world. Back in 2021, it was estimated that revenue from scamming globally amounted to US$ 7.8 billion worth of stolen cryptocurrency. Since then this figure has likely grown.

Collating complaints and local studies, the OHCHR report offers an overall map of the phenomenon, which not surprisingly found a haven in the so-called Golden Triangle, an area between Thailand, Laos and Myanmar sadly known for drug trafficking.

Both the pandemic and Myanmar’s post-coup chaos have created the ideal conditions for online scams to boom. Against the backdrop of a civil war, crime syndicates have flourished undisturbed, mixing trafficking in arms, drugs, and people.

Special Economic Zones (SEZs) too have become places of choice for such activities, the UN body states. In Cambodia, as of July 2023, online scam centres are or were reportedly operating in Phnom Penh, Kandal, Pursat, Koh Kong, Bavet, Preah Sihanouk, Oddar Meanchey, Svay Rieng, including in the Dara Sakor SEZ, and the Henge Thmorda SEZ.
In full: https://www.asianews.it/news-en/Hundred ... 59052.html

DMW to repatriate 27 Filipinos forced to work as scammers in Cambodia
By Marita Moaje October 11, 2023, 2:16 pm
MANILA – The Department of Migrant Workers (DMW) has deployed a team to Cambodia to assist in the repatriation of 27 Filipinos who were victimized by illegal recruiters.

“The Filipino victims entered Cambodia as tourists as early as January this year. They were informed that they would be working as tech support representatives but were forced to work in an online scamming facility in the O’Smach District located near the Thai border,” DMW officer in charge Undersecretary Hans Leo Cacdac said in a news release on Wednesday.

The DMW team, led by Assistant Secretary Francis Ron de Guzman, which left for Cambodia on Monday, would provide legal and financial assistance, as well as psychological first aid to the rescued Filipinos.

Cacdac said the victims were rescued on Sept. 26, with the help of the Cambodian National Police (CNP).

He said the 27 Filipinos were about to be transferred from O’Smach District to another online scamming facility in the coastal city of Sihanoukville when the CNP intercepted their convoy.
https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1211574