Despite police raids and media exposés, housing compounds in Kampong Speu and Phnom Penh suspected of hosting online scam rings run by trafficked labor, appear to remain operational – or have yet to yield the mass rescues expected.
This comes as some foreign workers uncovered in the sting operations were simply deemed “not tortured” by law enforcement officials but remain unaccounted for.
In the past two months, national police raided fortified complexes in Kampong Speu, informally known as Mango Park, and in Phnom Penh’s Steung Meanchey commune over suspected illegal gambling or worker abuse, uncovering over 1,000 foreigners from a mix of nationalities who were reportedly “detained”.
Local media reported the sweep in Phnom Penh was triggered after workers tipped-off authorities they were being held against their will, resulting in officers finding evidence of “illegal online gambling” operations. The raid at Mango Park came a day after a South Korean news outlet alleged the site was a scam hub trafficking Koreans to defraud others and allegedly colluding with local law enforcement – a claim officials vehemently denied.
Even so, the sudden mobility of law enforcement appeared to showcase rejuvenated efforts to combat Cambodia’s notorious “scamdemic”, as senior police officials called for greater international cooperation and stronger action against the country’s growing organized crime problem.
But the sweeps, framed as efforts to seize foreign workers involved in labor disputes or selectively target a few bad actors, have left little evidence of rescuing hundreds of potential trafficking victims or rounding up ringleaders.
According to vendors near the compound in Kampong Speu, before it was raided on October 25, foreigners – such as Chinese and Pakistanis – who worked in the guarded and gated-razor wired complex, referred to it as either a “restaurant” or “casino”, during their scheduled time outside the compound late in the morning when they could buy food.
Immediately after the raid, outside lunch breaks no longer happened, and catered ordering – where vendors received mass orders from one unidentified customer which they dropped off with the security guards – stopped for about one week before starting back up, according to one food seller.
“The compound still operates as normal but there is even more restricted access in and out than it was before,” said Sreymom*, a food vendor next to the compound, as she packaged dozens of prepared meals before driving them over to a security guard.
While several witnesses told CamboJA News a large police convoy was at the raid, none saw hundreds of workers taken away.
More than a week after the sting, government-friendly Khmer Times reported that only 25 individuals detained in the operation – mostly Chinese – were sent to Phnom Penh Municipal Court for questioning.
The court did not respond to questions about why the 25 detainees were brought in, their current whereabouts, or the hundreds of other foreigners found in the raid.
Sok Veasna, head of the General Department of Immigration – the agency tasked with extraditing foreigners in Cambodia – confirmed the department received no caseloads or detained groups of overseas workers from operations in Kampong Speu or Phnom Penh’s Steung Meanchey commune.
Kampong Speu deputy police chief Nhem Sao said the compound remains operational after the raid and investigation found “no evidence of workers being tortured.” Sao ignored repeated questions about the nature of the business conducted at the site or if the foreign migrant workers were screened for human trafficking.
Spokespersons for the National Police, the lead agency in the operation, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The fate of the 1,000 – or more – foreigners at Mango Park remains unclear, with the Chinese and South Korean embassies in Cambodia – representing the majority of those found in the raid – not confirming whether their citizens have been repatriated or are still at the compound.
While the Chinese embassy did not respond to emails, the South Korean embassy referred reporters to Cambodian authorities.
Meanwhile, about nine kilometers from Mango Park, crossing into Takeo province, sits a similar heavily barricaded compound, referred to as “Mango Park 2” on scam watchdog channels. It was not visited by police during the October raid and, as visible in satellite imagery, has more than doubled in size since January.
A former cook who worked inside the compound, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, said the complex houses “more people than you can count,” with restaurants and convenience stores catering to Chinese and other foreign workers, like Indians, who are not allowed to leave without permission from their boss. Khmer employees, such as himself, enter and leave with ID cards on lanyards.
“Chinese workers are not allowed to leave unless being transferred to another location,” the former cook said, adding that the complex’s management regularly moves workers between compounds across the country, most likely including Mango Park. However, they could not confirm if the workers came directly from Mango Park.
“I do not know what they are doing but I saw thousands of Chinese people working on computers in many rooms,” they said.
Whereas suspected illicit operations appear to be thriving in Kampong Speu and Takeo despite the sweep, a more recent raid in Phnom Penh may have actually disrupted a scamming and money laundering ring – at least for now.
On November 6, national police units raided a fortified housing complex in the Steung Meanchey commune in Phnom Penh following reports of labor abuse and suspicion of illegal online gambling activities.
Although initial reports indicated that 200 individuals, mostly Chinese and Pakistani nationals, were found in the compound, other reports indicated that 606 people were detained.
Like vendors outside Mango Park, shop owners near the Steung Meanchey compound – which is advertised for sale on a third-party real estate site for $11 million – recalled occasional visits from Chinese nationals inside the surveilled compound who would buy soda or snacks. Since the raid, no such transactions have occurred, and the building appears inactive, they said.
Despite this, a group of security guards remain at the compound gates, where Chinese characters are visible and clothes hang on the caged balconies. They said business has ceased due to a crackdown on “illegal gambling” and that they are simply there to “protect the workers’ belongings.”
A source familiar with the matter, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the case’s sensitivity, said the foreigners rounded up in the raid are being held at a quarantine center near the Kandal border, now used as a temporary immigration detention site.
In late November, Chinese media reported that over 200 nationals detained in the raid were deported in the first of several planned batches. Authorities have not indicated that any of the hundreds were victims of forced criminality.
While illicit activities may have been halted in the Phnom Penh crackdown, the aftermath mirrors other operations, where foreign workers found in raids are treated as criminals rather than victims, despite fitting the profile of an industry trafficking over 100,000 people in Cambodia, according to a UN human rights report.
An anti-trafficking specialist, requesting anonymity due to the seriousness of the issue, said authorities rarely screen for trafficking victims forced into criminality during one-off raids on suspected scam farms.
“The Cambodian law enforcement authorities who conduct these limited ‘raids’ are not anti-trafficking specialists – they do not understand human trafficking and how to identify it among vulnerable people like foreign migrant workers,” they said.
The Cambodian policies’ anti-trafficking unit, which are trained to identify trafficking victims, are rarely involved in raids, the specialist said. Business ties between scam site managers and senior law enforcement often shield operations, resulting in few genuine crackdowns. Even when raids occur, they have little impact on the scam centers, the specialist added.
Ties between local authorities and scam syndicates have also been reported by investigative organisations such as the United States Institute of Peace and the UN Office of Drugs and Crime.
Calls to Sok Sambo, director of the Anti-Human Trafficking and Juvenile Protection Department, seeking comment on claims about the unit’s lack of involvement in raids went unanswered.
The raid at Mango Park appeared to be more for show than substance, likely aimed at appeasing foreign governments, boosting public relations, and signaling to criminal cartels the cost of their continued impunity, the specialist said. While the operation briefly slowed online scams, it had little long-term impact, they added.
“So basically, the events of October 24 at Mango Park were a show-of-force to demonstrate what could be done and perhaps to influence continued business relations, but ultimately did not do more than slow down online scamming operations for 12 hours or less.”
The Pakistani and Indian embassies did not respond to requests for information about citizens found or detained during raids over the past two months.
* Asterisks used in this article mark pseudonyms used to protect the identity of sources who may be at risk of reprisal due to their testimony.
Update: This story was updated shortly after publication to include details about over 200 Chinese nationals extradited following the raid in Steung Meanchey.
