Cracking Down on Scam Compounds in Southeast Asia

Online scams are a rapidly growing scourge: The Global Anti-Scam Alliance estimates that $442 billion USD globally was lost to scammers in 2025. A major driver of this growth has been the emergence of professionalized online scam operations run by transnational criminal organizations based across hundreds of compounds in Southeast Asia, particularly in Myanmar and Cambodia. These crimes are two-sided: On one side, the criminal organizations steal billions from victims all around the world, and on the other side, these organizations rely on a trafficked workforce of people who are forced — sometimes brutally — to scam others. In 2025, the United States unveiled a national Scam Center Strike Force to coordinate inter-agency efforts against cryptocurrency fraud and scams based in Southeast Asia, seized a record amount of stolen cryptocurrency, and sanctioned the Prince Group, a large conglomerate in Cambodia, over their scam activities. Other countries — including the UK and South Korea — have also intensified pressure on Cambodia over the scams. In January 2026, Cambodia extradited the head of the Prince Group, Chen Zhi, to China just ahead of a visible crackdown on some compounds, which has caused an exodus of workers — including those who were trafficked into the scam compounds and in need of assistance. Join us for a discussion about the impacts of sanctions and other initiatives from the United States on countering scams, the current situation in Cambodia, and what needs to happen beyond visible crackdowns to take down scam compounds.