Cambodia crackdown exposes 'digital arrest' scam centre targeting Indians

A nationwide crackdown in Cambodia has resulted in the shutdown of about 200 scam centres, Reuters reported on Wednesday, citing Chhay Sinarith, senior minister and chair of the country’s Commission for Combating Online Scams.

Interestingly, one of the centres displayed photos of Mahatma Gandhi and B R Ambedkar, boards bearing the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) emblem, and posters of the Greater Mumbai Police, all of which were used to defraud Indians through “digital arrest” scams.

Earlier this week, the Cambodian government showed one such abandoned centre to the media in Kampot province near the Vietnam border. According to the Reuters report, the centre, known as My Casino, had large workspaces lined with rows of computer terminals, with desks covered in documents detailing methods to defraud Thai victims. It also housed dedicated call booths and even a mock Indian police station used as part of the scam operations, the report added.

The Cambodian authorities said that no arrests were made at the complex since workers fled after the detention of their alleged boss, Ly Kuong. The report also quoted the police as saying that they lacked the manpower to detain those leaving.

“We have only about 1,000 policemen in the entire province and there are about 300 military policemen. Even with both forces combined, we still can’t stop them because there were about 6,000 to 7,000 of them when they left this place,” said Kampot provincial police chief Mao Chanmothurith.

Why does this matter for India’s fight against digital arrest scams?

This crackdown on the syndicate comes at a time when India is grappling with rising cyberfraud, with so-called “digital arrests”, particularly targeting senior citizens, being one type. According to a report by the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), a division of the Union Home Ministry, resident Indians have lost more than ₹52,976 crore to various fraud and cheating cases over the past six years.

The Supreme Court of India has gone so far as to ask the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to take charge of the probe into digital arrest scams, calling the issue a matter that required “immediate attention”. It has given the CBI a free hand to examine the role of bankers under the Prevention of Corruption Act, wherever fraudulent accounts — also known as mule accounts, through which money is moved rapidly — have been used to facilitate digital arrest scams. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has also been asked to explore whether artificial intelligence (AI) or machine learning (ML) systems can be used to detect suspicious accounts and automatically freeze proceeds of crime.

Most digital scams are carried out by sophisticated transnational networks that bestride an entire ecosystem, from callers to corrupt bankers to mule accounts. For example, the Delhi Police last month busted a Taiwan-linked international cybercrime syndicate that allegedly defrauded around ₹100 crore from people across India by impersonating anti-terror and law enforcement officers and placing them under “digital arrest”.

Authorities said several of the accused had earlier been employed at scam centres in Cambodia and were allegedly recruited and financed by a handler based in Pakistan. A lawyer in Nepal is suspected of overseeing the operations remotely, they added, as quoted by PTI.

Similarly, the Delhi Police recently arrested seven people for allegedly defrauding an elderly couple of ₹14.85 crore, according to a report by The Indian Express. The authorities alleged that the scam was carried out through a complex “digital arrest” involving non-governmental organisations (NGOs) across three states, an international cybercrime syndicate, mule accounts, and months of planning. The international syndicate allegedly included fraudsters based in Cambodia and Nepal. In fact, southeast Asian nations such as Cambodia, Vietnam, and Myanmar are increasingly becoming the epicentre of global digital scams, including digital arrests.

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