Cambodia has witnessed a "mass exodus" from the country's online scam operations in recent weeks amid growing international pressure and the extradition to China of an alleged kingpin.
Beginning in mid-January, reports emerged of workers weighed down by suitcases and plastic bags full of belongings streaming out of scamming compounds.
Barbed wire was removed from buildings in Bavet, a major hotspot in Svay Rieng province, local news outlet Mekong Independent reported, while fleeing workers caused traffic congestion at the border crossing to Vietnam.
Hundreds of the workers ended up camped outside the Chinese and Indonesian embassies in Phnom Penh pleading for assistance to return to their home countries.
More than 2,752 Indonesian citizens had sought consular assistance, the Indonesian embassy said.
"I had been in the compound for 12 months, fearing for my life," a trafficking survivor called Mehi told Amnesty Inernational.
"But one day several of us woke up and realised the compound managers had left the site and the security guards were gone.
"The doors and gates were left open and we walked out."
Jacob Sims, a visiting fellow at Harvard University's Asia Center, said while Cambodian authorities had conducted sporadic raids and made a few high-profile arrests, the exodus seemed to be proactive on the part of the compounds' managers.
"According to sources on the ground, thousands of people have left the compounds," said Mr Sims, one of the foremost experts on Cambodia's scam industry.
"It is hard to say precisely what is driving this, but it does seem like the government has likely told a subset of the compounds that the jig is up.
"It's very hard to say right now how sustainable this disruption is, but it does seem more significant than past crackdowns which have been more purely performative."
An expanding industry
Call centre style operations run by transnational crime networks out of multi-storey compounds have proliferated in Cambodia in recent years.
Scams — such as phoney cryptocurrency investments or "pig butchering" romance cons — now bring as much as $US19 billion ($27 billion) per year into the country, equivalent to nearly half its GDP, according to Humanity Research Consultancy.
While some of the workers are willing participants, many are trafficking victims who report being lured with offers of legitimate jobs and forced to scam victims amid threats of beatings and torture.
The operations initially recruited mostly Mandarin-speaking workers to target victims in China, but increasingly have enlisted people speaking English and other languages to expand their reach.
When the Thai military moved into a bombed scam centre on the border in December — after another outbreak of the ongoing border conflict — they found mock-ups of police stations from around the world, including an Australian Federal Police set-up, that were used in scams impersonating authorities.
International pressure
In response to the growing international concern about these scamming operations, governments especially China and more recently the US and South Korea have been putting pressure on Cambodia and other South-East Asian countries to crack down on the industry.
Beijing has convinced Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar to repatriate thousands of Chinese nationals alleged to have been working in scam centres.
Last month, China announced the execution of 11 criminal syndicate bosses extradited from Myanmar and another four this week.
The US has called out the Cambodian government's complicity in the industry while also sanctioning and issuing indictments against some of the major players.
South Korea was prompted to become more involved following the murder last year of a South Korean college student who had reportedly been lured to work in a Cambodian scam centre and has managed to have hundreds of its citizens sent home in recent months.
Kingpin extradited
In early January, Cambodian authorities arrested and extradited to China the chairman of Cambodia's Prince Group, Chen Zhi, who the US Department of Justice had accused in an indictment of masterminding a multi-billion-dollar "cyber fraud empire".
The extradition was a dramatic turn of fate for the high-profile Chinese businessman.
At one time, the "neak okhna", or "lord", had been a personal advisor to then prime minister Hun Sen.
Mr Sims said ultimately the exodus was the result of sustained international pressure.
"Just from a timing perspective, it appears China's decision to finally take action against Chen Zhi was the tipping point and certainly China has long wielded outsized influence over Cambodia," he said.
"But I don't think we should discount the sanctions, indictments, asset seizures from the US, UK, Korea and Thailand as also playing a material role in leading us to this point."
A 'humanitarian crisis'
Amnesty International said many of those who had left the compounds had no passports, money, medical care or any pathway to safety.
"This mass exodus from scamming compounds has created a humanitarian crisis on the streets that is being ignored by the Cambodian government," said regional research director Montse Ferrer.
"Amid scenes of chaos and suffering, thousands of traumatised survivors are being left to fend for themselves with no state support.
"This is an international crisis on Cambodian soil. Our researchers have met people from Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas.
"They are in urgent need of consular assistance in order to help get them home and out of harm's way."
Mr Sims said the Cambodian government needed to step up to help the workers abandoned by the compounds.
"The exodus itself has been extremely chaotic and the Cambodian government has continued to act with profound negligence," he said.
"No victim support is being provided and the traditional response is effectively crippled because of a combination of repression and funding cuts," he said.
The Cambodian government has been contacted for comment.
What's next?
While many of the scam compounds seem to have been abandoned, others have reportedly continued their operations unabated.
Mr Sims said the "major established local players" appeared to be experiencing continued impunity due to their business, personal and familial ties to Cambodia's leadership.
"Elite criminality has been a defining feature of governance failure in Cambodia for decades," he said.
"While Chen Zhi's case is extraordinary for various reasons, it is certainly the case that the transnational criminals (as opposed to the embedded native-born Cambodian elite criminals) are likely more vulnerable to accountability for a variety of reasons," he said.
"However, the history of the [ruling Cambodian People's Party] elite strongly suggests that it is more than capable of adapting and finding new ways to generate rents through predatory and criminal means."
Mr Sims said the international community needed to maintain pressure on the industry.
"Barring sustained pressure and attention on the issue, it seems likely that it could reconstitute itself," he said.
