Escaping the Compound Amidst Government Crackdowns

I' name is Sirasco, and you're listening to the Sunday story from Up first So we've come in through the backck now security guards stopped us. They didn't allow me to take any photos. Earlier this year, investigative reporter Shibani Matani visited a massive industrial complex outside of Cambodia's capital, Penam Pen 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 twenty thousand of them. 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 in this 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 Cime Complaint Center, the cyber scam industry managed to defraud Americans of more than twenty billion dollars last year. And in twenty twenty four, experts estimated that profits from the cyberscamming industry were equivalent to roughly half of Cambodia's formal GDP. But in the last several months, under international pressure The Cambodian government has accelerated a sweeping crackdown on the industry Scam operations have been raided and shut down, and more than two hundred thousand scam workers have been released W this ongoing effort, reporters have gained unprecedented access to a previously hidden world Today on the Sunday story, we have an exclusive two part series on the global cybber scam industry We're going to take a deeper look notot from the perspective of people who were scammed but from the people who once took part in the scamming Shibani Matani is based in Singapore She's been covering Southeast Asia for more than fifteen years, and she's been following the cyber scam industry for the past three When we come back Shibani Matani takes us to Cambodia. This message comes from IXl IXL is designed to help students strengthen core skills and build confidence before the new school year begins. 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Capital O What's in your wallet Terms apply, details at capital onene. com We're back with a Sunday's story. Here's investigative reporter Shibani Matani Since January, the Cambodian government has ramped up its raids on scam compounds across the country And as a result, some two hundred thousand scam workers have poured into the streets of Penom Pen These people are from all over the world, at least thirty five 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 Even today, many of them are still unable to get home So this spring, I decided to go to Penon Pen and try to speak to some of them I wanted to know What was their firsthand experience of the scam industry How do they end up in Cambodia I thought they could give an unfiltered view of the inner workings of this industry. to dozens of people on their trip Most of the scam workers were from China and also from Indonesia It surprised me how many of them came from Africa My name is Ishmi. My name is Oska. My name is Amma. and all the stories were actually remarkably similar I was trafficked in Cambodia for like a fake promise of j The job was offering one thousand two hundred dollars. so I was like, wow, this is a good opportunity. So I texted them and in a week or two I was able to travel and camp In recent years, crime syndicates have focused on scamming Westerns So they've heavily recruited workers from English speaking countries in Africa Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone On this trip, the majority of the Africans I spoke to were from Uganda Sometimes, you know, it was difficult to get deep into conversation you know, some of them are also obviously very cautious. because they didn't want to expose the inner workings of gam compounds that they believed were still so powerful But I did manage to sit down and get to know one man really, really well and that was through a friend of mine who introduced me to him My friend, his name is Mjdara He's a Cambodian journalist based in Penom Pen. And Daran and I we spent the week together zooming around in his little Tuk Tk. He's also a Tuktk driver sometimes to earn extra money. And it was through Dara that I got introduced to one Ugandan men in particular His name is Schwib and he's twenty four We would come to know each other pretty well over the next few weeks Tribe 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 blanky. He was wearing sort of dark gray baseball cap and acid wash jeans and a gryish 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. But thenen 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 Schuib 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 Schreb 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 Swib is from Kampala the capital of Uganda. One day in January of twenty twenty five He was sick in bed sccrolling TikTok when he saw something that made him stop for a little bit. kind of ads. It was a target job ad on his for you page promising somewhere between eight hundred to one thousand dollars for a month's workk in Cambodia.ree airicket I left it. So at first he actually dismissed it and you know he kept scrolling. E after scrolling some couple of days. I was I sw it again I was like It doesn't cost me anything to send a message Why should' say I sent the message. And right away, he was sent a WhatsApp number to continue the conversation with a recruiter. The recruiter told him that there were a few different positions available, that there was a lot of work. He could be a supermarket attendant, a delivery driver or a warehouse worker And on top of that, they would even cover his visa and his travel expenses and food and accommodation once he got there It was a pretty big deal because in Kampala, someone like Schweib could only earn about hundred and fifty, two hundred dollars a month. The person on the other end of the phone was offering him up to a thousand dollars a month. I was like that's a big income. I can go there maybe like two years good su source of income say okayate it is okay. I don't care which what I will be doing as long as I give it Scheib had always relied on himself He has ten siblings. Both his parents passed away by the time he was eighteen So he had to drop out of school and get a job He worked in kitchens for a few years, eventually getting promoted to a chef everything was going so so we Th I became sick. Schweibbe struggled for years with debilitating stomach ulcers The stress of his work sometimes made them worse and Eventually he was forced to take bed rest. take a break. After those initial messages, the recruiter told Tribe what they needed for him. And it actually wasn't much I dont me do you have a passport then? I filled up the papers, everything they asked me to. He sent them his passport information and filled out all his personal details. I did everything they asked me to And everything was just moving so quickly that it didn't seem real. the I took it serious It was when They asked me that when I going to travel hour Th then I told them two weeks in the C driver in one week Th I was like, okay Then after like two days He sent me a visa The visa the visa of Cambodia Tht after like two days That's when they sent me a ticket This is the milo. I never spent in any coin. Everything came. It came in so smooth, but as was like it was too good to be true Schribe had to leave in a hurry When he got to the Epod in Kampala, he met a group of ten others all guys who were also headed to Cambodia They showed their passports and were quickly ushered through. The guy was like, K who is so friendly. The guy asked me, this is your first time to travel. And I was like, Yes, this is my first time to travel. He went, Okay, good luck. And he stampped in. Then he proceeded Tribot never stepped foot on a plane before, so as he board it, he felt such a rush of emotion. And I was thoughtking I took some pictures. Then when the plane left off, that's when I knew that now this is real. I'm out of immigrant.? Immigrant search for get some money. Th I come back home. Schrey landed in the Penompen airport on febrary tenth, twenty twenty five. His new employers had sent a driver to pick him up outside the terminal. It was Nexas ex Yeah, it was Lexas.. And the driver even helped him with his bags. We were like the bosses. The guy took our bags. then he told us said, You follow me, you follow me. Then he went to the car. Even the guy opened the door for us. It felt like VIP treatment. The group of ten Ugandans split up into different cars So it was just Schwbe and one other the guy who got into the Lexus bound for the same location And then they drove and drove and they kept driving We driveed for five hours. They drove at night and he really couldn't get his bearings. So we were so silent never. was totally pitched dark and the main thing that was illuminating the streets were just the lights of the cars on the road with him Beyond that, there wasn't much to see And after they drove for such a long time through these Pot Hold Roads and deserted Rads, suddenly he He saw a city come into view And suddenly he felt totally different pulse He started to hear music. look of people there music Almost like a party. It like a festival. It's like ten PM and somehow everyone was awake. 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 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 This is going to be good. Like people here seem to really be enjoying themselves. They are parting. they are woralking. Yeah, we are going to enjoy your life here As shrbe entered the compound, the illuminated signence said Bavevette Business Center. Biness 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. Pakistan The Ghanians, Nigerians, Ugandans, Kenyians, Tanzanians, there were a lot of people there and different trapes 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 Shripe 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 toist get back to you tomorrow since you' tad D Dani was lived. the next year he signed his contract. We were called in the office. We had to sign the contract. The contract was in Chinese. Then there were also some part of English. And the contract stipulated that he would be paid eight hundred fifty US dollars a month. They would provide him three meals a day and accommodation Then they gave us their computers. Schweib says they walked him to his station and to help him get set up, they told him what to download. A VPN, telegram, WhatsApp Instagram, TikTok, and basically described it to him as sort of remote online work. I'm just going to enjoy working on your computer. That is my hoby. I can do this. Yeah, no problem. I was even on YouTube enjoying the music. because even I had some ear cods. I was enjoying the music. Shrib told me that he was given several days to to acclimate, but right away, sudden things felt a little off After he'd signed the contract with the bosses, he was taken to a separate administrative building. where Cambodian guards took his photograph and gave him an ID card to use for entering and leaving the main gates of Bovette Business Center But triribes said the Chinese bosses then He took the ID card away. When we went back to the office, they removed the IDs from us. Now he couldn't freely leave the complex We went outside and went some tour around the path to see what is going on. There were a lot of buildings. What I can say is like A small town, a more developed town. bath shops, there are the hospitals, there are supermarkets, saloons There's nothing that you need outside So when did you start realizing Wait a minute, this is st. At first I never knew the job that I was going to be doing That's what I can see Then after like after like a week. They added me phones without anything. They just used to give me phones. Now I had like for phones. They gave them dozens of SIM cards and all of them were for US numbers. After like a week I started seeing things If they were just doing remote work, why were they in possession of all this stuff Why did they have hundreds of computers, thousands of SIM cards What was all of it for You're listening to the Sunday's story, we'll be right back This message comes from XL, a learning platform for helping students maintain summer academic progress. A single subscription covers math, science, and reading for all children in a household. Receive twenty percent off at xl dot com slash npR Support for NPR and the following message come from Good RX Summer's here, and with busier days and changing routines, staying healthy and on budget is top of mind Good RX, you can find big savings at the pharmacy for the whole family. Pets too Compare prescription prices at over seventy thousand pharmacies and instantly find free coupons. GoodRX is not insurance, but it may beat your copay price if you do have insurance. Save at the pharmacy this summer. go to goodRx. com slash up first By the end of that first week It all started to click Schweib realized that he'd been brought to Cambodia to work as a scammer And tribe, like many of the other Africans there, would be working at the lowest level of the operation We are specialized in three categories. that we are ready for of us They were the receptionist And they were the killers the developers. They were IT technicians and they buy stolen data off the internet They get access to troves of phone numbers, Instagram accounts and other data thenen there were the receptionists like Schwepe So you were Yes, yes, our receptionist. So what does a receptionist do Sh I explain to me that as a receptionist He was the first person that a client would be in contact with That's what the victims were called, by the way, clients His job was to be that first human touch via text message. to introduce clients to basically a profitable scheme He would lure them bit by bit with real cash rewards. They giveiving a scripts Can you give me an example of what the script will say in this V f to missy Dake Hello, how are you doing? Like a spamning message. And then maybe out of ten numbers, one person would reply Who is this one? No that's when I get back to this fs I'm Sarah. As I mentioned earlier, I just copy all of it, then I paste, then I send. This is a remote job opportunity. Your main task will be to help improve how products are seen and ranknt on big shopping platforms. Goping pasting, copping pasting, following this sces Yeah. The best part, You don't need any technical skills or prior experience So Frey was in charge of Cooking clients into what's called a task scam and others who I interviewed in Cambodia described how this worked to me as well. As a client, you're convinced that you've signed up for a remote marketing job and that you just have to like a few YouTube pages, Amazon products But to get sort of further in And to be given more things to do, you have to deposit money into an account. So You deposit money, you get paid up You deposit more, they give you more work, you get paid out more and earn commission that way And this commission structure was sort of deliberately complex. Maybe it was a way to make it seem more real. In the script that tribe used, there was a section included it called Personal Conversation Small tidbits of information that would make someone trust a stranger. that they were speaking to, you know, on a social networking platform In one script, he was Antonella Camboni, an Italian living in California who deeply valued her financial security In another, he was a thirty four year old with a dog named Toby. The tone was never pushy So I guess most of your clients were American that was the market that we were in. but Some some markking in the USA market, Smit is Canada, Summit is Indian sumit is UK. Summit is South Africa After Shrib 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 is 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 I would hand the client up the chain until eventually that client interacted with a killer But they kill as we are home we know those Chinese used to we used to call them used to call them killers because was what they were doing that we actually This killer would convince the client to make their very last deposit before empty out the whole wallet The tries said that after each kill, the killers would celebrate They used to beat the drum Tin thingss. orry They would beat the drum when somebody gets a lot of money. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. they could be a drum. Yes. L the Chinese drum. Yeah yeah Schweib said he heard some of the killers boast about how they made a huge kill from a client with a hospitalized kid. He had Kills talk about targeting entire communities of retirees Will somebody consider 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 killa is hitting the drum. Don't you be like, e, what happened? Mbe? Th guys maybe they have some witchcraft. Schreb 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 Do you ever feel very emotional or very upset? A. lot of things But he and the other workers, they were under constant surveillance. They used to check our phones. And they used to do it randomly. If they find out like ent is somethingt going want a picture or what is going on here If you send a message for signingapp is going go here That means. Schweib told me there was an isolation room on the fifth floor of the building And he said, Everyone knew what happened there. They had some room they used to tch it Some guys, it was a small room. That was where they'd bring in people who did not comply, who tried to escape, who tried to contact NGOs and rescuers Who tipped off clients to this being a scam I never went there to the isolation, but one of my friends when they take in the deep night, they punish him. after that they leave him. They could tie him on the bed. Then they come, they meet, they go the next time they come they meet again Now w w by the time the guy came back, the guy came back with a face ware with a lot of wounds. I min I saw you I knew that I was fucked up That's that's what I that's what that's what came in my head. You know I said there and I don't have any way back. Then I was like, a man me I have to go back home These stories of torture, they're consistent with what I'd heard from others who got out of similar compounds, and it's been well documented over the years in NGO reports and US government reports. Schwei thought he still had his original return ticket, which was for a month after his arrival on that month long tourist visa But then someone in the compound told him, just forget about that If you don't finish your contract, you'll owe the bosses about four thousand dollars. I was like man All my life, I never had that money You I was like now you have to do everything they tell you. He felt trapped. And I knew that No This is me. I have only two options. is to what country instead of the Angay Bc saf? Every day he worried about quotas Pay to God for clients When you can't sleep, you can't eat when you don't have the glance because you know what is coming. If they didn't get clients, they'd have to work longer hours, or his monthly salary would be deducted Bosses, they deducted money for everything They called them fines I'd heard from people who worked in other compounds that there were fines for being on the phone for too long Briefly clicking out of the scam chat window during their twelve hour work day. One rescuer told me that someone she helped was fined because they wanted to sit close to a window Schwue was often fined for not getting enough clients And there were daily expenses to account for too Shib is Muslim and he doesn't eat pork But the cafeteria often served polk So he went to the company, run supermarket to buy snacks And month after month his wages were whittled down to almost nothing Schw I bed at night from ten PM to ten AM It was a nocturnal schedule because of the time zones W to sleep b sleep, but sleep but sleep He said the bosses regulated how long he could talk on the phone. Sometimes they took his phone away and gave it back only for a few hours And they told him he ought to keep his phone call short Just quickly check in with your family, but Don't tell them anything about what you do But if you called your family and told them like, hey, something is wrong. I couldn't tell them because I didn't want them to worry about it anything. What even if I told them they were not donhing they were going to do about it So you didn't tell anybody anything.. They never knew anything The guill ate away at tribe slowly. I used to get some sleeping ps. I used to purchase them. I used to take two ps, two ps, two pews, ps, two ps. untill after some time. The two ps were no longer working. I used to sleay for only two hours His preay has started to change When he'd left Comala, he brought a uran with him. rather than just praying for himself and his escape When he said his daily prayers He started praying that the clients who were true their profets wouldn't come back. That tribe 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 Yeah greedy Anone who is st is just bing. becausecause they should have known the arrangement It is too good to be true This is a Sunday story. Stay with us This message comes from XL, a learning platform for helping students maintain summer academic progress. A single subscription covers math, science, and reading for all children in a household. Receive twenty percent off at xl dot com slash npR Support for NPR and the following message come from Good RX Summer's here, and with busier days and changing routines, staying healthy and on budget is top of mind Good RX, you can find big savings at the pharmacy for the whole family. Pets too. Compare prescription prices at over seventy thousand pharmacies and instantly find free coupons. GoodRX is not insurance, but it may beat your copay price if you do have insurance. Save at the pharmacy this summer, go to goodRx. com slash up first So when we say scam company it's entirely apt You can't think of these as sort of scrappy little criminal enterprises or mafia in the jungle They run like a business Front lightight scam is like Schwipe They're managed by the team leaders who are the 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 profit off the compounds on their land My source is on the ground, they told me that it's the landlords who maintain a relationship with the police tip them up to raids and who keep them protected In July of twenty twenty five, about F months after Schweib arrived in the scam compound Thailand started attacking Cambodia The two countries do have longstanding border disputes But later Thigh officials claimed they were targeting centers of human trafficking. and gam industry itself Ties on social media even coined a new tone Cambodia Cambodia said Thailand's claim that it was waging a war against this quote scam army was just a pretext to gain control of that territory Tensions have continued to simmer, though there's a tentative peace deal now. Though Shwi was far from Thailand bosses were getting nervous because these clashes near the border prompted Cambodia to announce they were cracking down on the industry So Schwiv's boss has started shifting him and the other workers around moving them to new, more isolated compounds