ASEAN Beat | Security | Southeast Asia

Cambodian Government Grants Journalists Access to Giant Former Scamming Compound

Despite touting its anti-scam credentials, it is unclear whether Phnom Penh will investigate prominent individuals who allegedly enabled and profited from the industry.

A Google Maps satellite image of the No. 8 Park online scamming complex in Kamchea Mea district, Prey Veng province, Cambodia.

Cambodia’s government yesterday granted the media access to a massive former online scam compound in the country’s southeast, as it prepares to host a high-profile international anti-scam conference later this week.

Journalists from 39 domestic and international media organizations visited the former cyberscam compound known as “No. 8 Park,” a fortified and self-contained compound in Prey Veng province capable of housing around 20,000 people.

According to a report in the Phnom Penh Post, the No. 8 Park, also known as the Meun Chey Commercial Center, began construction in 2023.  The compound covers about 120 hectares and “contains numerous buildings, including residential blocks, offices, a market and shops, with a casino at its center.” It added, “The sheer scale of the site resembled a small, enclosed town.”

Authorities say that they raided the No. 8 Park complex in February, based on information from China’s Ministry of Public Security, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and tips and allegations made by individuals who had escaped from the compound.

Inside the complex, journalists were shown evidence of the sophisticated online scams that were recently carried out by No. 8 Park’s huge staff of trafficked workers. According to a report by The Standard, rooms were set up to resemble foreign law enforcement offices, including one with signage for the “Singapore Police Force Commercial Affairs Department” that was used by scammers posing as police and financial crime investigators. Another room featured a Chinese slogan: “Please don’t pretend to work hard, because the result won’t act with you.”

The media visit was intended as a prelude to the two-day International Conference on Combating Online Scams, which opens in Phnom Penh tomorrow, and is set to be attended by representatives from more than 20 countries.

The conference, which will be co-hosted by Interpol, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, and China’s Lancang Mekong Cooperation mechanism, is intended to showcase the extent of the government’s ongoing anti-scam crackdown. Phnom Penh launched the crackdown last year in response to the growing international scrutiny of Cambodia’s central role in Southeast Asia’s scamming economy, which Thailand attempted to weaponize during the two nations’ border conflict last year.

As part of the campaign, the government set up an ad hoc Commission for Combating Online Scams, passed a law outlawing cyberfraud, and launched raids on dozens of scamming compounds across the country. The government claims that it has now investigated over 830 suspected scam sites and dismantled 86 large compounds since July 2025. It also says it has deported more than 20,000 foreign suspects, and Cambodian newspapers have been filled with reports of the arrests of low- and mid-ranking officials for involvement in scams. Late last month, Senior Minister Chhay Sinarith, who heads the government’s ad hoc Commission for Combating Online Scams, declared that “large-scale scam activities have been brought fully under control, and there are currently no online scam compounds remaining in the country.”

While the current crackdown is serious and has far exceeded authorities’ previous efforts, there are good reasons to believe that the political economy that facilitated the country’s takeover by criminal scamming gangs remains more or less intact.

For decades, Cambodia’s political system has conferred special privileges on those with close connections to the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) and to the family of long-ruling Prime Minister Hun Sen. As I detailed in my 2014 book on Cambodia under Hun Sen, this system grants powerful individuals considerable autonomy to amass wealth – even from business of an illicit nature – and liberates them from the constraints of the........

© The Diplomat