Thousands of people, including alleged victims of trafficking and numerous other abuses, have managed to escape or have been released in recent weeks from the vast network of cyber fraud centers spread across Cambodia. In these complexes, those now released were often forced to work in the multimillion-dollar illicit online scam business, of which the Asian country has become one of the global epicenters. The Indonesian embassy in Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, claimed last week that in just five days more than 1,400 of its nationals had managed to leave these centers, and went to the diplomatic embassy in search of help, according to the Jakarta Post. Images have been published on Chinese social networks showing dozens of citizens of this country queuing and also sleeping at the doors of their embassy. Amnesty International, through testimonies collected on the ground and videos that it has managed to geolocate, assures that there are “thousands” of survivors of numerous nationalities in this situation, who have supposedly left at least 17 different illegal housing complexes. Many come from China and Southeast Asia, but there are those who come from as far away as Uganda or even Brazil. And now they face a new problem: hundreds wander aimlessly, with hardly any money and without passports, through the streets of the country. They cannot find a way to return to their places of origin. «Suddenly, ten days ago, the Chinese leaders of the complex were no longer there. They had escaped. So we fled,» says Kabir, a 24-year-old from Bangladesh, who had been held for two years, along with about 500 other people, in one of these centers in Sihanoukville, a coastal city in Cambodia. The reason for the escapes and mass releases is not clear, nor is their direct link to police operations by the Cambodian authorities. But these come after the recent arrest and extradition to Beijing of Chen Zhi, the alleged boss of Chinese origin of a “cyber-fraud empire” (the name of the American justice system, which also had him on its radar) in Cambodia. And it also coincides with the growing international pressure on this country to put a stop to this cruel machinery, sustained through a 21st century system of transnational semi-slavery. Kabir does believe that his captors’ escape has to do with the operation against Chen Zhi, although he has no evidence. “The Chinese work together; they are like gangsters.” Originally from Meherpur, a poor agricultural district in Bangladesh, he arrived in Cambodia attracted by an advertisement he saw on social media for a supposed job in a casino. “I thought it was going to be like those in Europe and the United States,” he says in English. He never reached one of them. The “Chinese bosses”, armed with guns and cattle prods, took his passport. He was confined in a complex and forced to open dozens of profiles on social networks: Facebook, Whatsapp, dating applications. Her objective was to contact clients from all over the globe, pretending to be a woman, and follow the script indicated by her captors. After getting intimate, he had to convince the victims to make non-existent investments in cryptocurrencies. Indonesian citizens who have escaped from cyber fraud centers wait outside their country’s embassy in Phnom Pehn, Cambodia, on January 22. Anadolu (Anadolu via Getty Images)Kabir, who does not give his full name for fear of being located, describes the ambivalent relationship with those responsible for the centers. At first they even paid him a small sum, although he was not allowed to leave the premises. He suffered and saw torture, beatings and extortion. They ended up selling it to another company, also run by Chinese, where violence continued, and he no longer received any money. In this center, where about 500 people worked, they woke up without guards 10 days ago. So now he sleeps in a shelter for people in the same situation in the capital, Phnom Penh, run by an international NGO. They have no money or passport. There are more than a hundred. «There is a woman from Georgia who has gone crazy from the torture. She is traumatized. She just cries and repeats that she wants to go home.» He is in contact with his embassy to regularize his situation and return. It will be a slow process. “It is what we call a crisis [humanitaria] aggravated,» describes Montse Ferrer, regional director of research at Amnesty International, on the phone. Added to the current situation of vulnerability are the very harsh episodes suffered. Among the testimonies they have collected are murders, rapes, unwanted pregnancies, death due to complications after forced abortions, torture, beatings and daily extortion. «There are many traumatized people.» She demands greater cooperation from the States, and denounces a complicated scenario due to the generalized drop in aid. The UN Human Rights Office estimated in 2023 that there could be up to 100,000 in Cambodia alone. detained victims, and another 120,000 in Myanmar. They make up the weakest link in a gigantic transnational criminal network with the capacity to act in all corners of the planet. “It is the most global issue I have worked on, by far,” says Ferrer. “The people who are financially defrauded are all over the world, and those who are in these centers are also from all over the world.” In Cambodia alone, it is estimated that the profits from cyber scams exceed $12.5 billion. annually—about 10.43 billion euros: more than a quarter of Cambodia’s GDP—according to a 2024 report by the United States Institute of Peace. For China, the large neighboring country, it represents a growing security problem that has been spreading on its southern borders with Myanmar and Cambodia, where authentic criminal enclaves operate. Beijing’s response has become more forceful in recent months to an issue that implicates its nationals as victims and executioners. The People’s Republic announced the execution of 11 people convicted of being part of these mafias dedicated to cyber fraud based in northern Myanmar. Led by the “Ming family,” those executed established multiple complexes, hired an “armed protection” system, and the justice system found them responsible for committing murders, assaults and illegal detentions to control operations and punish people involved in scams, “which caused the death of 14 Chinese citizens and the injury of several more people,” according to the media. In Cambodia, the direct involvement of the police forces in the recent liberation of the centers is not entirely clear. None of those interviewed by Amnesty International speak of police or military presence during or after their escape or liberation. «It suggests a lack of intervention by the Cambodian authorities in the mass exodus,» says the humanitarian organization in a recent report. «We have never before seen so many escapes at the same time,» adds Ferrer, who does believe that the movement may reflect the existence of communications between the different groups. complexes, and a connection to the Cambodian police operation against Chen Zhi. 
Chen Zhi, founder of the Prince Group, in an image published on the Prince Holding Group page.Prince Holding Group.Alleged boss of one of the largest criminal networks in Asia, this Chinese citizen was arrested on January 6 in Cambodia and handed over two days later to the authorities in Beijing. Chen, 38, is founder and chairman of Prince Group, a Cambodia-based multinational business conglomerate, which allegedly acted as a front for cryptocurrency investment scams through which he stole billions of euros from victims around the world. His business was built, according to investigations, thanks to the cruel system of forced labor centers spread throughout Cambodia. He was “the mastermind behind an extensive cyber fraud empire operating under the umbrella of the Prince Group, a criminal organization built on human suffering,” said US Deputy Attorney General for Homeland Security John A. Eisenberg in October. Law enforcement in this country had just uncovered a large-scale fraud case originating in Cambodia, and they accused Chen of being at the top of the pyramid. “People held against their will in the facilities participated in cryptocurrency investment scams […] that they stole billions of dollars from victims in the United States and around the world,» said the Department of Justice. The US justice system also announced that it had confiscated 127,271 bitcoins stored in cryptocurrency wallets owned by Chen. With an estimated value of about 15 billion dollars (about 12,843 million euros), it was presented as the largest seizure of crypto assets in the history of the United States. In the face of growing international pressure, the Cambodian Government has assured in recent months that the “eradication” of these illegal centers is one of their priorities. But the country’s authorities have been accused on numerous occasions of complicity with the fraud industry. “Some senior government officials and advisors owned, either directly or through companies, properties and facilities that were known to be used by online scam operators to exploit victims of labor trafficking, and benefited financially from these crimes,” denounced the 2024 US report on human trafficking in Colombia. Cambodia.
