15 OCT 2026 — Cambodia remains on the lowest tier of the US State Department's annual human trafficking ranking, and the reason is the scam compounds. The 2026 Trafficking in Persons Report, released on 9 October, finds that "during the reporting period there was a government pattern of human trafficking involving scam centers." It says some senior officials profited from compounds and protected them, even as the government ran its biggest crackdown yet.
Cambodia's government says it has worked with foreign police to arrest traffickers and has stopped women and girls at risk from travelling abroad. The report credits it with raids and arrests, but finds that no trafficker linked to scam centres was prosecuted.
What the report found
The Cambodia chapter keeps the country at Tier 3, where it has been since 2022. "Some senior government officials and advisors and law enforcement officers financially benefitted from the trafficking of victims in scam centers and interfered to protect scam center operations and intimidate victims and civil society," it says.
The report does credit a prime minister-led crackdown, Operation XXL, launched in July 2025 and stepped up from January 2026, which closed hundreds of suspected scam centres and freed thousands of potential victims. Enforcement, it says, was selective. Local residents and survivors told investigators that compounds had "started emptying prior to police or military arrival" and that nearby centres stayed open. Observers noted that "some scam centers tied to powerful elites were not targeted for raids". Officials referred about 80 cases involving 750 scam operators to court. The report also notes that in January 2026 the government issued official licences to casinos with a documented history of hosting scam centres.
Victims treated as offenders
The harshest findings concern the people pulled out of the compounds. The report says the government "detained tens of thousands of former scam workers in immigration detention facilities, reportedly with minimal or no screening" to identify trafficking victims. Civil society groups were prevented from screening or helping foreign nationals in detention, and foreigners without documents, including unidentified victims, were fined US$10 a day while held. The government identified 331 victims or suspected victims, down from 405 a year earlier.
Arrests at the top, with limits
The crackdown did reach some powerful figures. In January 2026, the report says, Cambodia arrested the US- and UK-sanctioned chairman of the Prince Group, a former adviser to the prime minister, and removed him to China. Raids that followed targeted Prince Group-linked centres first, then spread.
The government is also drafting a law against online scams with penalties of up to 20 years in prison and fines of up to US$500,000 where scams involve trafficking, detention or violence. Trafficking prosecutions overall rose sharply, to 1,042 suspects in 506 cases, though convictions fell to 569 from 658.
Cambodia's response
Interior Ministry spokesperson Touch Sokhak acknowledged the report, Kiripost reported. "Cambodia has stopped hundreds of women and girls whose reasons for travelling abroad were unclear, as part of efforts to prevent human trafficking," he said, adding that Cambodia had worked with the FBI, INTERPOL and police from China, Australia and South Korea. Kiripost notes that the crackdown has led to thousands of arrests and the freezing of more than US$300 million in assets. Prime Minister Hun Manet told a conference on 23 September, as carried by UCA News: "As a result of our efforts, we have completely dismantled all large-scale scam compounds in the kingdom."
Why it matters beyond Cambodia
For readers elsewhere in the region, the report matters because the losses land outside Cambodia. As RECATOOLS has reported before, the compounds sit in Southeast Asia while much of the money comes from victims across East Asia and Australasia. The IMF and World Bank's Bangkok Blueprint this week called for exactly the kind of cross-border cooperation that tracing those flows requires. A crackdown that closes buildings but leaves the protectors in place tends to move the business, not end it.
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