Shabani Matani

speaker

246 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 21 Jun

Shabani Matani’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.

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Up First from NPR · Caught in Cambodia’s Scam Machine: Part 1 · 21 Jun 2026 podcast

So we've come in through the back now.

Security guards stopped us.

They didn't allow me to take any photos.

There's barbed wire all around, CCTVs.

You can see lookout posts as well on the top of the buildings.

It looks like dormitories, sort of white buildings with black rails and with bars on the windows.

It's a whole little city.

I mean, Times Square could fit in this.

So all of these are hallmarks of a scam compound.

Since January, the Cambodian government has ramped up its raids on scam compounds across the country.

And as a result, some 200,000 scam workers have poured into the streets of Phnom Penh.

These people are from all over the world, at least 35 countries.

And I saw reports of people streaming to the embassy gates, literally waiting outside, banging on the door, asking for help to be repatriated home.

And even today, many of them are still unable to get home.

So this spring, I decided to go to Phnom Penh and try to speak to some of them.

I wanted to know what was their firsthand experience of the scam industry.

How did they end up in Cambodia?

I thought they could give an unfiltered view of the inner workings of this industry.

I spoke to dozens of people on that trip.

Most of the scam workers were from China and also from Indonesia.

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