Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the global scam industry operating in Cambodia?
I'm Ayesha Roscoe, and you're listening to the Sunday Story from Up First.
So we've come in through the back now. Security guards stopped us. They didn't allow me to take any photos.
Earlier this year, investigative reporter Shabani Matani visited a massive industrial complex outside of Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh. It's set up like an office park, but it's fortified against the outside world.
There's barbed wire all around, CCTVs. You can see lookout posts as well on the top of the buildings.
People once lived here, about 20,000 of them.
It looks like dormitories, sort of white buildings with black rails and with bars on the windows.
And it's clear that it was abruptly abandoned. So much trash.
It's a whole little city. I mean, Times Square could fit in this. So all of these are hallmarks of a scam compound.
This cyber scam compound is among dozens in Cambodia that operated with impunity for years. Migrants were brought to these places from throughout Asia and Africa and put to work scamming people on the other side of the world. According to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center, the cyber scam industry managed to defraud Americans of more than $20 billion last year.
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Chapter 2: How did workers end up in Cambodia's scam compounds?
And Dara and I, we spent the week together zooming around in his little tuk-tuk. He's also a tuk-tuk driver sometimes to earn extra money. And it was through Dara that I got introduced to one Ugandan man in particular. His name is Shwaib and he's 24. We would come to know each other pretty well over the next few weeks.
Shuaib and I ended up meeting in person for the first time at a Cambodian burger chain called Lucky Burgers. I saw him from the back first. I could see even from the door when I went in that he was pretty tall, but mostly really lanky. He was wearing sort of dark grey baseball cap and acid wash jeans and a greyish black t-shirt.
When we sat down, he had his phone out and he was taking little notes on his phone and he seemed kind of nervous. Then once he started speaking, I had to sort of figure out times that I could interrupt him because once he started talking, he really opened up about his story and just got really into it and kept going.
Shuaib asked me to identify him by just his first name for his security, because what he shares about the inner workings of these criminal syndicates, which continue to operate today, and his own role could put him at risk. Shuaib told me his story from the beginning, before he even arrived in Cambodia.
And, you know, I think it's important because it reveals the long and really the truly global reach of the scam industry. So Shoaib is from Kampala, the capital of Uganda. One day in January of 2025, he was sick in bed, scrolling TikTok, when he saw something that made him stop for a little bit. It was a targeted job ad on his For You page.
Promising somewhere between $800 to $1,000 for a month's work in Cambodia.
Visa, free air ticket, whatnot. Then I was like, these are scammers. Then I left it.
So at first he actually dismissed it and, you know, he kept scrolling.
Then after scrolling some couple of days, I also saw it again. Then I was like, it doesn't cost me anything to send a message. Why shouldn't I? I sent a message on TikTok. Then...
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Chapter 3: What promises lured workers to Cambodia for scam jobs?
He thought it was like a rave actually because they're playing this music and it was music that he liked. It is good music. It is EDM. EDM music with heavy beats and he stepped out of the car and he thinks, oh my gosh, like wow, where have I landed? This is going to be good. Like people here seem to really be enjoying themselves.
They are partying, they are walking. We are going to enjoy our life here.
A tribe entered the compound. The illuminated sign said Bavette Business Center. He noticed how multinational it was. He saw Chinese people, he saw Filipinos, he saw Vietnamese people. He heard a lot of different languages.
There were Pakistan, Nepali, the Ghanians, Nigerians, Ugandans, Kenyans, Tanzanians. There were a lot of people there and different tribes.
When the driver dropped him off, he left and there was another guy who brought him in. This guy was Chinese and he introduced himself as the boss of the company. He greeted him and asked him to hand over his passport. So Shoaib gave him his passport.
They took our passport. That's the number one.
Someone showed him a room and told him that was the room that he would be staying in and that he was going to share that room with a number of other guys too.
Now you have to rest. We will get back to you tomorrow since you are tired. Then we slept.
The next day he signed his contract.
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Chapter 4: Who is Shuaib and what is his story in Cambodia?
In another, he was a 34-year-old with a dog named Toby. The tone was never pushy. So I guess most of your clients were American, right?
That was the market that we were in. But some market in the USA market, some it is Canada, some it is India, some it is UK, some it is South Africa.
After Schreib convinced his client to sign up, his goal was to get them to withdraw their money. That was his goal, to get them to withdraw. The client had to see that the scheme was working. They had to gain something from it, you know, so that they would come back.
And then once they did, once they put in a deposit, withdrew it, Shuai would hand the client up the chain until eventually that client interacted with a killer.
But the killers were only those Chinese. We used to call them killers because what they were doing, they were killing.
This killer would convince the client to make their very last deposit before emptying out the whole wallet. Schwab said that after each kill, the killers would celebrate. Schwab said he heard some of the killers boast about how they made a huge kill from a client with a hospitalized kid. He heard killers talk about targeting entire communities of retirees.
Somebody can say that I'm so sick. I don't have anything to eat. I've sold my house. I've sold my car. I don't have anything left. I'm done. I'm done. Then after one week, you hear the same killer is hitting the drum. Then you'd be like, what's happening? Maybe those guys, maybe they have some witchcraft.
Schreib said he considered telling clients he spoke to that this was a scam so they could get out of it. Did you ever think, like, Did you ever feel very emotional or very upset?
A lot of times. A lot of times.
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Chapter 5: What were the initial experiences of workers in scam operations?
I used to take two pills, two pills, two pills, two pills, two pills. His prayers started to change.
When he'd left Kampala, he brought a Quran with him. But rather than just praying for himself and his escape, when he said his daily prayers, he started praying that the clients who withdrew their profits wouldn't come back. But Schreib said that he gradually came to think it wasn't just the killers who were greedy. He believed the clients themselves were also pulled in by greed.
Because they should have known. The arrangement?
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So when we say scam company, the word company, it's entirely apt. You can't think of these as sort of scrappy little criminal enterprises or mafia in the jungle. They're run like a business. Frontline scammers like Schweib, they're managed by their team leaders, who are their direct bosses. Then they have to report up to managers, who in turn report to the head of a department.
Then there's an HR department which handles recruitment, PR division that handles ads. Those are just the departments inside the compound itself. Outside, there's a whole infrastructure to protect and serve the criminal enterprise. There are drivers who bring migrants like Schweib over to the compound.
Fruit vendors and drink sellers who move to the streets around the compounds, hoping to cash in. There are the security guards who keep watch. And then the land itself, that is owned and controlled by tycoons close to the Cambodian government. They profit off the compounds on their land.
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