Cambodia aims to shut down all online scam centers by the end of April

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — Cambodia hopes to shut down all of the country’s notorious online scam centers by the end of next month, the head of the Southeast Asian nation's effort to combat the cybercrime said Wednesday.

Senior Minister Chhay Sinarith, in charge of the Commission for Combating Online Scams, told The Associated Press in an interview that the government since July had targeted 250 locations believed to be carrying out the lucrative criminal activity, and has shut down about 80%, or 200, of them.

He said police would carry out suppression activities after April in an attempt to keep the scam centers from reemerging.

Cambodia has launched previous crackdowns against online scam centers but without major effect.

“The real question is whether this effort targets the system that enables the industry, not just the buildings where scams happen,” commented Jacob Sims, an expert on transnational crime. “Past crackdowns in Cambodia have often left the financial and protection networks intact, allowing operations to quickly reconstitute.”

“So far there are few signs the current round of enforcement is reaching the key perpetrators among the Cambodian ruling elite,” said Sims, a Visiting Fellow at Harvard University’s Asia Center. “Moreover, continued restrictions on independent reporting and civil society actors make the government’s claims difficult to verify.”

Cybercrime has flourished in Southeast Asia, particularly in Cambodia and Myanmar, with scam victims around the world being bilked out of tens of billions of dollars annually, according to United Nations experts and other analysts.

The industry is closely involved in human trafficking, as foreign nationals are employed to run romance and cryptocurrency scams, often after being recruited with false job offers and then forced to work in conditions of near-slavery.

Chhay Sinarith said that in the latest crackdown the government launched 79 legal cases involving 697 alleged scam ringleaders and their associates.

At the same time, it has repatriated almost 10,000 scam center workers from 23 countries, he said, with fewer than 1,000 awaiting official repatriation. Others who have escaped or been released from raided centers have gone home on their own.

Cambodia works closely with countries, especially China and the United States, to combat the problem, he said.

Cambodian police on Tuesday raided a suspected scam center in a high-rise building in the capital, Phnom Penh, arresting about 60 Cambodians and Chinese nationals at their desks.

“They did chat to convince people in Europe to invest the money with them, but their investment is fake and fraudulent. It is not real,” said Bun Sosekha, a deputy commissioner of the Phnom Penh Municipal Police.

Earlier Wednesday, journalists were shown equipment confiscated in raids elsewhere, including uniforms and fake identification cards used by scammers to pose online as Japanese police officers to trick and intimidate victims.

Cambodia has been plagued by the illicit activity since it began on a much smaller scale around 2012, when it was primarily carried out using voice-over-internet-protocol — VOIP — phones, with the callers disguising their location and identities, Chhay Sinarith said.

The scams proliferated during the COVID-19 pandemic, when casinos, many already engaged in the gray-area activity of online gambling, no longer had in-person customers and turned to online scams on an industrial scale.

Scam centers have since spread around the world, as far as Africa and Latin America.

Associated Press writer Grant Peck in Bangkok has contributed to this report.

This story is part of an ongoing collaboration between The Associated Press and FRONTLINE (PBS) that includes an upcoming documentary.

Journalists look at equipment confiscated in a raid by Cambodian police at a scam center in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Wednesday, March 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)

Journalists take a tour of a scam center in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Wednesday, March 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)

Equipment confiscated in a raid by Cambodian police are laid out on a table at a scam center in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Wednesday, March 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)

Senior Minister Chhay Sinarith, who is in charge of the Commission for Combating Online Scams, speaks to the Associated Press in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Wednesday, March 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)

Bun Sosekha, Deputy Commissioner in charge of Security Unit, Phnom Penh Municipal Police, checks equipment confiscated in a raid by Cambodian police at a scam center in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Wednesday, March 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is visiting Ohio and Kentucky on Wednesday to argue that his policies can steady an economy facing shock waves from the war on Iran and to try to defeat one of the few congressional Republicans who has dared to defy him.

In Cincinnati, the Republican president will tour Thermo Fisher Scientific, a pharmaceutical company. There, he'll tout efforts to lower prescription drug prices, a key part of his attempts to show his administration is focused on making the cost of living more affordable for many Americans ahead of November's midterm elections.

After that, Trump will visit a logistics packing facility in nearby Hebron, Kentucky, part of the district of Rep. Thomas Massie. Trump is backing a primary challenger to Massie.

Trump mentioned the U.S. strikes on Iran while leaving the White House on Wednesday, saying, “We have hit them harder than virtually any country in history has been hit, and we're not finished yet.”

The trip is likely to test of Trump's ability to cleanse his party of those who oppose him, but also to try to stay on an economic message increasingly strained by the military action launched by the U.S. and Israel against Iran. He’ll be “talking about the economy, which is, of course, the utmost importance to him,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.

Polls showed that Americans were increasingly wary of Trump's handling of the economy even before the conflict with Iran began, and fighting there has derailed Trump’s messaging, as the low gas prices he once bragged about are now surging and stocks that had set record highs have slipped.

Employers also cut an unexpectedly high 92,000 jobs in February, and revisions trimmed another 69,000 jobs from December and January payrolls — which the White House had previously hailed as “blockbuster."

None of that has stopped Trump from continuing to insist the country is booming — and blaming the Democrats for everything else.

“They’re the one that caused the problem," he told a House Republican meeting in Florida on Monday. "But we’re really bringing down prices big.”

Democrats say that costs remain high for many Americans and that, despite more than a year of pronouncements about major improvements since he returned to the White House, Trump hasn't done much to counter the rising cost of living.

After Democrats won the Virginia and New Jersey governors' races in November, the White House announced that Trump would travel the country to show that he’s taking kitchen table issues seriously and reassure voters nervous about still-rising prices and economic growth.

Since then, the president has made stops in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina and Texas — though his speeches sometimes have been more focused on his own political grievances than his plans to try to help lower everyday costs around the country.

This trip, however, marks the first time this primary cycle that Trump has sought to keep promises to punish members of his own party who oppose him on key issues. The president has endorsed Ed Gallrein, a farmer, businessman and retired Navy SEAL, who is running against Massie in Kentucky's Republican primary on May 19. Trump and Gallrein will appear together on Wednesday.

Massie is an outspoken Trump critic who opposed the White House-backed tax and spending measure and bucked Trump by pushing to have files related to the sex trafficking investigations into Jeffrey Epstein released. He's also opposed the U.S. strike on Venezuela that toppled then-President Nicolás Maduro and, most recently, the war in Iran.

“This isn’t America First,” Massie posted on X on Sunday, blaming the war for causing gas prices to jump.

President Donald Trump speaks with reporters before departing on Marine One from the South Lawn of the White House, Wednesday, March 11, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

President Donald Trump speaks with reporters before departing on Marine One from the South Lawn of the White House, Wednesday, March 11, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

President Donald Trump speaks with reporters before departing on Marine One from the South Lawn of the White House, Wednesday, March 11, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

President Donald Trump boards Air Force One, Wednesday, March 11, 2026, at Joint Base Andrews, Md. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

President Donald Trump speaks with reporters before departing on Marine One from the South Lawn of the White House, Wednesday, March 11, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

President Donald Trump waves as he boards Air Force One, Monday, March 9, 2026, at Miami International Airport in Miami. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)