Over 300 Vietnamese arrested after Cambodia scam bust: Police
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The arrests of 343 people on internet fraud charges were made on March 27.
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: ST FILE
HANOI – More than 300 Vietnamese accused of internet fraud have been arrested in Vietnam after being repatriated in March from Cambodia where the authorities dismantled a transnational cyberscam ring, the police said on March 29.
Across South-east Asia, organised criminal gangs have used casinos, hotels and fortified compounds as bases to carry out sophisticated online scams, defrauding people around the world, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.
Cambodia hosts dozens of scam centres with tens of thousands of people perpetrating online scams – some willingly and others trafficked – in a multibillion-dollar illicit industry, rights monitors say.
The arrests of 343 people on internet fraud charges were made on March 27, said the police in Vietnam’s Dong Nai province, which borders Cambodia.
They were among nearly 400 Vietnamese handed over by Cambodian authorities on March 17 who “were part of a transnational online fraud ring recently dismantled in Cambodia”, Dong Nai police said in a statement.
Cambodia’s immigration department said in March that 776 Vietnamese nationals “involved in online fraud cases” in the country were deported to Vietnam on March 17.
Vietnamese police said the accused had worked at a casino in the Cambodian city of Poipet, on the border with Thailand, and used social media and messaging apps including WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook to “defraud internet users, especially the elderly, frequent social media users, online traders and those with limited technological knowledge” in Vietnam.
The police did not say how much money the criminal group had obtained from victims.
In January, Vietnamese police took 35 people into custody for allegedly scamming victims out of US$350 million (S$452 million), “using advanced technology for fraud and online gambling”.
The month before, 22 Vietnamese suspects in Cambodia were arrested on fraud charges in a joint operation between the two countries.
The police in Vietnam said in 2025 that since 2020, Vietnamese victims have lost US$1.5 billion in more than 24,000 cases of internet fraud.
From hubs across South-east Asia, scammers lure internet users into fake romantic relationships and cryptocurrency investments, stealing tens of billions of dollars annually from victims around the world. AFP
