Casinos in Sihanoukville received more than $1 billion in cryptocurrency from January to early September, despite a government crackdown on online scam operations and casinos, according to a new report from blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs.
The report, released in late October, tracked crypto flows to 34 casinos in the coastal city from Jan. 1 to Sept. 7 and found the money kept arriving as authorities publicized raids on fraud operations.
Of the $1.07 billion, about $687 million, or 64%, went to casinos tied to networks sanctioned by the United States Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), the report said.
The figures measured cryptocurrency sent to digital wallets TRM linked to the casinos, based on its blockchain data. The report did not say where the money came from or how it was used. But TRM said that in field observations in the city, it found casinos accepting cryptocurrency at cashier desks and converting it into gambling chips and U.S. dollars with few apparent checks on customers, though operators appeared more cautious with unfamiliar visitors than before. Pawnshops, phone shops, hotels, convenience stores and exchange counters across the city also offer to swap cryptocurrency for cash, the report said.
The findings come as Cambodian authorities have pledged to dismantle online scam operations across the country, which commonly use casinos as legitimate fronts and rely on cryptocurrency to defraud victims and launder proceeds. Before Cambodia’s enforcement drive and mounting international pressure to crack down on the industry, Sihanoukville had become a hub for casinos, online gambling and fraud operations often reliant on trafficked labor.
Under rules the National Bank of Cambodia (NBC) issued in 2024, businesses that exchange, transfer or hold cryptocurrency for customers must be licensed by the central bank.
Authorities said they have raided 832 scam sites between July 2025 and August 2026. On Sept. 8, the country’s anti-scam commission said it had revoked the license of 18 casinos and suspended nine others. Jin Bei Group, whose affiliated casino was among those TRM tracked, was on the list of revoked licenses.
Chhoeng Chantha, technical adviser to the Commercial Gambling Management Commission of Cambodia (CGMC), said the commission is closely monitoring cryptocurrency activity in cooperation with the NBC and the National Police.
He said commercial gambling operators are strictly prohibited from promoting, circulating, buying, selling, trading or accepting payments in cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin and USDT. He did not say how the ban is enforced, despite TRM’s field observations of casinos accepting USDT at cashier desks.
The NBC did not respond to a request for comment.
Cryptocurrency kept reaching Sihanoukville’s casinos despite the enforcement push, though monthly inflows fell from an average of $148 million in January through May to about $95 million in July and August, according to the report. Nearly all of it, 99.9%, was USDT on TRON.
USDT, issued by the company Tether, is a stablecoin designed to hold a steady value of $1. TRON is a blockchain network popular for its low transaction fees. Tether and TRON did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Most of the drop came from casinos tied to sanctioned networks, whose average monthly inflows fell from $100 million to about $48 million, the report said. But TRM Labs cautioned that “some of the decline may reflect operators moving to new wallets that TRM has not yet attributed, so the figures may overstate how far activity fell.”
In April, OFAC sanctioned Cambodian Senator Kok An and 28 individuals and entities in his network, including Huan Hai Bo Lai International Investment and Xihu Resort Hotel, which operates a Sihanoukville casino. The move followed OFAC’s October 2025 sanctions on Prince Group and 146 related individuals and entities, including Jin Bei Group.
The sanctioned casinos kept receiving cryptocurrency money after the designations. Between April 23 and Sept. 7, entities TRM attributed to the Xihu casino received $184 million in cryptocurrency, while those linked to Huan Hai received $129 million, the report said. A casino associated with Jin Bei Group received $9 million after the Prince Group sanctions.
Because many casinos frequently changed their cryptocurrency wallets, TRM Labs could not easily compare their transactions with previous years. However, it was able to track Huan Hai’s transactions further back, finding that the casino received $264 million in cryptocurrency between the start of this year and Sept. 7, up from $90 million during the same period in 2025.
Lou Chandaravordy, executive director of the Cambodia Blockchain Association, said that USDT has long been widely traded in Cambodia, not only in Sihanoukville.
She said limited understanding of USDT among law enforcement officials could be one factor behind the challenges in monitoring cryptocurrency exchange, but pointed to gaps in cooperation between Cambodian authorities and international digital asset companies as a bigger concern.
“If those casinos use [digital assets] in global companies, the state cannot track them. That is precisely why they are used for money laundering,” she said.
If Cambodia authorities worked more closely with those companies, they could ask them to freeze large or suspicious transactions, Chandaravordy said.
Authorities have previously targeted alleged cryptocurrency money-laundering networks serving online scam operators. In September, the Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) charged a Cambodian currency exchanger with multiple criminal offences, including conspiracy to commit bribery, organizing technology fraud and operating a cryptocurrency exchange business without authorization. He was accused of helping an alleged Chinese scam mastermind convert about 250.6 million USDT, worth roughly $250 million, into U.S. dollars.
An operator of a cryptocurrency exchange in Sihanoukville, who requested anonymity over security concerns, said that demand for USDT exchanges had declined. She attributed the drop to Chinese nationals returning home and local workers losing their jobs.
Most of her customers were Cambodian employees working at minimarts and Chinese-owned businesses who exchanged USDT for dollars to cover daily expenses after receiving their salaries, she said. Most transactions were small, ranging from $200 to $300.
“Most of the people who come to exchange money with me only exchange small amounts. In the past, there was much more activity during the Huione Pay period,” she said, referring to the U.S.-blacklist digital payment service shut down by NBC.
The operator said Huione’s closure had also affected her ability to handle larger transactions because she no longer had a reliable channel to transfer the funds.
“Since Huione closed, I no longer have a place to exchange or transfer the money, so I have stopped accepting large amounts. I cannot accept as much as I did before because I have nowhere to move the money,” she said.
