Amnesty Says Police-Linked Security Firms Ran Cambodia’s Scam Compounds

Photo: Dmitry Makeev, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (file photo of Sihanoukville, a city Amnesty says hosts many scam compounds).

Private security companies with links to Cambodia’s police and military helped run scam compounds where trafficked workers were enslaved, beaten and raped, Amnesty International said in a report released on Thursday, Oct. 29, 2026. The report, titled “Official Business”, says more than 20 serving members of the military and police were linked to at least 22 Cambodia scam compounds.

What Amnesty found

Amnesty said it interviewed 151 survivors between January 2023 and September 2026, identified 86 compounds and visited 82 of them. Survivors described being held against their will, forced to defraud people online, and beaten or sexually abused when they failed to meet targets, according to the report.

The group named five security firms. It said Leap Somnang operated at least 15 compounds in eight provinces and linked it to Col. Ban Sophat. It said Security Response had links to the Huione group and Panda Bank and operated at five compounds, including Park 8, also known as PV01. It also named ZD Security and Dara Security, at two compounds each, and Best Security in Bavet, whose listed phone number Amnesty said belonged to a deputy police chief, Lay Channy.

Amnesty linked Brig. Gen. Tek Bunthoeun to a compound known as BM02. Researchers geolocated TikTok videos posted by more than 200 guards to 23 compounds, the report said.

By the numbers: the scale of the investigation

Amnesty Secretary General Agnès Callamard said the findings showed the compounds operated with official involvement. Khaosod English reported that she said the Cambodian state is “probably complicit.”

Cambodia’s response

The Cambodian government said 77 police officers had been disciplined in connection with scam operations, The Guardian reported. The security firms named in the report denied the allegations, according to The Guardian.

A regional problem

Scam compounds have spread across Southeast Asia since the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in Cambodia, Myanmar’s border areas and Laos. The operations target victims worldwide with fake investment and romance schemes.

The scam industry is also tied to Myanmar’s conflict, where armed groups and militias control border areas that host compounds. ASEAN’s humanitarian mission into Myanmar this week, and the bloc’s summit in Manila on Nov. 10–12, will bring the issue before regional leaders. For more, see our Southeast Asia news hub and our report on the ADMM-Plus meetings in Cebu.

Background: how the scam industry grew

Many compounds began as casinos and hotels built for Chinese visitors in Sihanoukville and border towns such as Bavet and Poipet. When Cambodia banned online gambling in 2019 and the pandemic closed borders in 2020, operators turned the buildings into centers for online fraud. Workers were often recruited with fake job ads promising well-paid office work, then had their passports taken on arrival, according to UN and Amnesty research.

A 2023 report by the UN human rights office estimated that at least 100,000 people in Cambodia and 120,000 in Myanmar may have been held in scam operations. The schemes, including “pig butchering” fraud that builds fake relationships before persuading victims to invest, cost victims billions of dollars a year worldwide, according to the U.S. government.

In 2025, the U.S. Treasury and the United Kingdom sanctioned the Prince Group, a Cambodian conglomerate, and its chairman Chen Zhi, accusing them of running forced-labor scam compounds. U.S. prosecutors also moved to seize about $15 billion in bitcoin they linked to the group. Prince Group has denied wrongdoing.

The Amnesty report’s full text, with its methodology and the companies’ responses, is available on Amnesty’s website. Thailand, which borders Cambodia at Poipet and has been fighting the scam trade on its own side of the frontier, has cut power and internet links to some border areas in past crackdowns. Whether Cambodian authorities open criminal cases against any of the officers named, beyond the disciplinary steps the government has described, will be the main test of the response.

Related coverage: ASEAN’s aid mission into Myanmar. Find all of our regional reporting, plus country facts and official resources, on the Southeast Asia news hub.

Sources

• Amnesty International: Cambodia: Security companies enabled slavery and rape in scamming compounds
• The Guardian: Cambodian police linked to scam compounds, Amnesty says
• Khaosod English: Amnesty report coverage

Additional sources

• Amnesty International UK