Cyber slavery: inside Cambodia's online scam gangs (UPDATED)

CEOCambodiaNews · Post by **CEOCambodiaNews** » Sat Jul 30, 2022 12:53 am

2 suspects arrested for ‘recruiting’ workers for scam call centres in Cambodia
July 29, 2022
Thai police from the Technology Crime Suppression Division (TCSD) have arrested a man and a woman for allegedly recruiting Thai people to work with a call centre scam gang in Cambodia.

According to TCSD police, the female Thai suspect was arrested with some of the victims in a car using a bypass heading towards the Aranyaprathet district of Sa Kaeo province, which borders Cambodia’s Poipet township.

During questioning after her arrest, the woman claimed that she inherited the recruitment service from her brother and boyfriend, who are already in police custody, adding that she would receive a commission from a Cambodian call centre scammer for every recruit sent to him.

The second suspect was apprehended by police at a house in Bangkok’s On Nut Soi 17. He denied having any knowledge of the alleged scammers.

Both suspects have been charged with public fraud, being members of a criminal gang, for working in association with a transnational criminal organisation and for money laundering.
https://www.thaipbsworld.com/2-suspects ... -cambodia/

CEOCambodiaNews · Post by **CEOCambodiaNews** » Sat Jul 30, 2022 10:52 pm

INDONESIA
53 Indonesians, duped to work at cyber scam center in Cambodia, are being held hostage: MoFA
By Coconuts Jakarta
Jul 28, 2022 | 2:00pm Jakarta time
Fifty-three Indonesians are being held against their will at a cyber scam center in Cambodia, Indonesia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, after they were lured to the country by fake job ads online.

The ministry says it has filed a formal request with the Cambodian police to ensure that the Indonesian citizens are freed and returned home.

“The victims were sent to Cambodia by recruiters — who are Indonesian citizens — to work as cyber scammers at a company owned by a Chinese citizen,” Teguh Adhi Primasanto, first secretary of the Indonesian Citizens Protection department at the Indonesian Embassy in Phnom Penh, said yesterday.

Teguh added that the 53 Indonesians have been held in Sihanoukville since arriving on July 18.

The town, located in Cambodia’s southern coast, is well-documented to house industrial-scale scam centers. There, thousands are imprisoned, abused, and forced to scam people around the globe after they arrived under similar circumstances as the 53 Indonesians.

It was reported that the trafficking victims managed to directly contact the Indonesian government to ask for help.

In Indonesia, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has called on local police to track down shady recruiters who may have ties to scam operations in Sihanoukville.
https://coconuts.co/jakarta/news/53-ind ... tage-mofa/

CEOCambodiaNews · Post by **CEOCambodiaNews** » Sun Jul 31, 2022 6:16 pm

THAILAND
Call centre clampdown nets 94
Cooperation with Cambodian cops sees raids across country
published : 31 Jul 2022 at 04:00
[excerpts]
Cambodian authorities have deported 94 Thais who worked or conspired with call centre gangs in Phnom Penh back to Thailand to face justice, say police.

Following a joint operation by the Police Cyber Taskforce (PCT) and Cambodian authorities to track down call centre gangs, 94 Thais were rounded up and deported from the Cambodian capital to Aranyaprathet district in Sa Kaeo yesterday.

The group had all worked at the call centre in Phnom Penh with 74 of them facing arrest warrants issued by the PCT.
All had been charged under various Cambodian laws before being deported to face further charges at home.

According to the police, the group was associated with four call centre gangs and some of the deportees are top members working for Taiwanese kingpins.
The latest raids on call centre gangs in Cambodia took place in four locations.
- First was Jing Chung Hotel in Preah Sihanouk province. Twenty-one suspects were arrested for an online-dating scheme orchestrated to lure victims into bogus investments.
- The second location was a five-storey building in the same province. Police arrested 18 suspects based in an IT-related business making scam calls to Thailand to swindle money.
- A further 10 suspects were arrested in Preah Sihanouk province on suspicion of committing loan fraud in another illegally run business.
- Finally, in Poipet in Banteay Meanchey province, police captured 25 suspects who had posed as employees of DHL Express delivery company to fool their victims.
Full article: https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/2357764/

CEOCambodiaNews · Post by **CEOCambodiaNews** » Sun Jul 31, 2022 6:37 pm

Sihanoukville police have been claiming that "foreign workers" in Sihanoukville are not "captives", yet...
Follow-up to post : post555917.html#p555917
Police Says Indonesian Nationals Held Captive in Cambodia Have Now Been Resued
31 July 2022 13:50 WIB

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Some 55 out of the 60 Indonesian nationals falling victim to an employment scam and held captive in Cambodia have been rescued by the local authority, the Indonesian Police has confirmed.

"Some 55 Indonesian nationals have been rescued by the Cambodian police," the Indonesian Police's Head of Public Information Bureau of the Public Relations Division Brigadier General Ahmad Ramadhan stated on Saturday.

The Indonesian nationals fell victim to a fake investment company based in Sihanoukville, Cambodia, and they are now being questioned by the local police, he said.

The 55 rescued Indonesian nationals consisted of 47 men and eight women, he added.

"The 55 Indonesian nationals are now being questioned by the Cambodian police in Sihanoukville," the brigadier general stated.

He revealed that the rescued Indonesian nationals would be removed to Cambodian capital Phnom Penh.

"Probably it will be tomorrow (Sunday, July 31) that they will be removed to Phnom Penh," Ramadhan noted.

In an effort to spot and rescue the Indonesian nationals held captive, the national police, through its attache in the Indonesian Embassy in Cambodia, had coordinated with the embassy's Defence Attache, Colonel Rizal, he stressed.

The case of the Indonesian nationals held captive by a fake investment company was first revealed by social media account @angelinahui97, who appealed to the authority, particularly Central Java Governor Ganjar Pranowo, to release them from incarceration.

Following the revelation, Governor Pranowo instructed Central Java Manpower and Transmigration Office to follow up on the case and coordinate with relevant authorities.

Follow-up coordination with the authorities revealed that the total number of Indonesian nationals held captive is 60, while according to the social media account the number is 53.

The whereabouts of the Indonesians held captive was later detected on Phum 1, Preah Sihanouk, Cambodia, with the coordinate of 10°37'33.0"N 103°30'08.7”E.
https://en.tempo.co/read/1617656/police ... een-resued

CEOCambodiaNews · Post by **CEOCambodiaNews** » Wed Aug 03, 2022 6:01 pm

Indonesia, Cambodia discuss cooperation in handling human trafficking
21 hours ago
Jakarta (ANTARA) - Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi met with Chief of the Cambodian Police Neth Savouen in Phnom Penh on Tuesday to discuss cooperation in preventing human trafficking.

"Cooperation between Indonesia and Cambodia in preventing human trafficking must be stepped up," Marsudi said, according to a Foreign Ministry press statement that was accessed from Jakarta on Tuesday.

The meeting came nearly three days after the Cambodian police released 55 Indonesian migrant workers who were held captive by an online scammer in Sihanoukville on July 30, 2022. Seven more Indonesian migrant workers were released on Sunday.

Cases of similar online scams have frequently been recorded since 2021.
https://en.antaranews.com/news/242453/i ... rafficking

atst · Post by **atst** » Wed Aug 03, 2022 6:19 pm

And still nothing said about the captors, are they free to carry on business as usual?

phuketrichard · Post by **phuketrichard** » Thu Aug 04, 2022 7:03 am

atst wrote: ↑Wed Aug 03, 2022 6:19 pm And still nothing said about the captors, are they free to carry on business as usual?

as long as the envelopes continue to be passed, its business as usual:
You'd think Cambodia would at least make an effort to stop this as its bad press

ASEAN summit starts today in PP and although would love to see the Thai's, Malay's or Indonesians bring this up, I doubt they will

nemo · Post by **nemo** » Thu Aug 04, 2022 8:14 am

It started yesterday and Myanmar was the main focus.
https://www.khmertimeskh.com/501125018/ ... activists/

phuketrichard · Post by **phuketrichard** » Thu Aug 04, 2022 6:57 pm

more bad PR concerning scam gangs

Industrial-scale online scam operations proliferated during the COVID-19 pandemic, taking over massive, heavily guarded complexes in hotspots like Cambodia’s Sihanoukville and Poipet, and the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone in Bokeo, northwest Laos. These tend to be based in casino hubs, which saw a sharp decline in revenue as travel restrictions brought in-person gambling, especially from Chinese tourists, to a halt. Alarmingly, many are also located in or alongside special economic zones (SEZs): areas marketed as relaxed-regulation industrial parks with one-stop tax offices to stimulate overseas investment, but which often descend into lawless enclaves patrolled by private security firms, which local authorities are unwilling or unable to police or control.
....

In Cambodia, the slaves-for-scams crisis has become so bad that it contributed to the U.S. government’s decision to downgrade Cambodia to Tier 3 – the lowest possible rating – in its 2022 Trafficking in Persons Report, released on July 21. “The report highlights online scam operations and associated trafficking crimes, along with the endemic corruption and lack of political will that limits progress in holding traffickers accountable,” said Chad Roedemeier, spokesperson for the U.S. Embassy in Cambodia. “We stand with the Cambodian people to identify, support, and seek justice for victims.”

Meanwhile, in Myanmar, whole new city-SEZs centered around Chinese-owned casino developments have been carved out in Myawaddy and nearby Shwe Kokko in Kayin State over the past two years. These are already being linked to human trafficking, online scams, and sexual exploitation. In April, Ekapop helped a woman being held against her will to plan her escape from a Myawaddy casino guarded by soldiers, and swim across the Moei River to safety in Thailand. The woman claimed that around 300 other women were still trapped inside, and had been forced into prostitution after responding to a job advertised by an Instagram influencer. Twenty-five kilometers away in Shwe Kokko, swathes of recruits believing they had jobs waiting at the casino are reportedly trapped in debt bondage, forced either to work for online scams or sold into the sex industry until they can pay their way out.

full article:
https://thediplomat.com/2022/08/inside- ... chipelago/

CEOCambodiaNews · Post by **CEOCambodiaNews** » Wed Aug 10, 2022 2:45 pm

Taiwan teen suffers electrical torture in Cambodian human trafficking case
Victims have reported alleged organ harvesting among other forms of abuse
By Huang Tzu-ti, Taiwan News, Staff Writer
2022/08/09 14:40
TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — A Taiwanese teenager from Tainan had been subjected to physical abuse including electric shocks in Cambodia for three months before his escape in one of the rampant human trafficking cases involving Southeast Asian countries.

The victim, a 17-year-old teen, was tricked into working in Cambodia’s Sihanoukville in April. His passport was confiscated upon his arrival and he was forced to engage in online investment scams exploiting romance seekers, according to the National Police Agency.

The victim said he would be beaten or even receive electric shocks if he refused to comply. According to him, he was sold multiple times because he failed to meet the demand of the fraud rings.

The ordeal lasted months until two weeks ago when he was sold again to crooks in Myanmar. He and another victim managed to flee within the borders of Thailand on route to Myanmar and were finally able to contact Taiwan’s representative office in Thailand with the assistance of an international non-government organization. He returned to Taiwan on Aug. 5.
In full: https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4620494

Cyber slavery: inside Cambodia's online scam gangs (UPDATED)

Re: Cyber slavery: inside Cambodia's online scam gangs (UPDATED)

Re: Cyber slavery: inside Cambodia's online scam gangs (UPDATED)

Re: Cyber slavery: inside Cambodia's online scam gangs (UPDATED)

Re: Cyber slavery: inside Cambodia's online scam gangs (UPDATED)

Re: Cyber slavery: inside Cambodia's online scam gangs (UPDATED)

Re: Cyber slavery: inside Cambodia's online scam gangs (UPDATED)

Re: Cyber slavery: inside Cambodia's online scam gangs (UPDATED)

Re: Cyber slavery: inside Cambodia's online scam gangs (UPDATED)

Re: Cyber slavery: inside Cambodia's online scam gangs (UPDATED)

Re: Cyber slavery: inside Cambodia's online scam gangs (UPDATED)

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