Cyberscam networks here have freed more than 400 Indonesians this month, Jakarta said, after Phnom Penh announced a fresh crackdown on the illicit industry.
Scammers working from hubs across South-East Asia, some willingly and others trafficked, lure Internet users globally into fake romances and cryptocurrency investments, netting tens of billions of dollars each year.
Some foreign nationals have left suspected scam compounds across Cambodia this month as the government pledged to “eliminate” problems related to the online fraud trade, which the United Nations says employs at least 100,000 people in Cambodia alone.
Recent Cambodian law enforcement measures resulted in “many online scam syndicates ... letting their workers go”, Indonesia’s ambassador to Cambodia, Santo Darmosumarto, said in a video posted to social media on Monday.
Between Jan 1 and 18, 440 Indonesians came to the embassy in Phnom Penh after they had been “released by online scam syndicates”, many seeking to return home, according to a post on Instagram.
“Because Cambodia’s crackdown will continue, the embassy predicts many more will flow in from the provinces,” Santo said.
He said the Indonesians who went to the embassy had been “involved in online scams” for anywhere between a few months and several years, and some had their passports taken from them.
Santo said the embassy would expedite repatriations but all Indonesians were “being directed to return home independently”.
Dozens of people, some with suitcases, lined up outside the Indonesian embassy on Monday.
An 18-year-old from Indonesia’s Sumatra said he fled a compound in Bavet city, near Cambodia’s border with Vietnam, where he was forced to scam people online for eight months without pay despite being promised US$600 (RM2,430) per month.
He said he arrived in Phnom Penh on Sunday and came to the embassy to ask for a new passport because his was “with a Chinese boss”.
“They heard police were coming inside the compound, so they let everyone go,” he said. — AFP
