Fake rooms, props and a script to lure victims: inside an abandoned Cambodia scam centre

"A row of customer service desks, divided by plastic screens, with landline phones, promotional leaflets and staff business cards. A seated waiting area and a private meeting room. All of it features the OCB bank's logo, or its trademark green colour. This is not a genuine bank branch, however. It's one of various mock up rooms inside a sprawling compound on the Thai-Cambodian border, where criminal groups are accused of using elaborate and industrial-scale fraud schemes to trick victims into handing over money."

"Within the six-floor building, in the Cambodian border town of O'Smach, there are rooms designed to look like offices for police forces from Australia, Singapore and China. There are even fake uniforms, badges and scripts to be read over the phone to victims. The scammers behind the compound targeted people not just in Vietnam, but across Asia, Australia and South America, according to documents and props discovered inside."

"It bombed the site and seized control of the area during border clashes with Cambodia last year, claiming it was used by the Cambodian military to launch drone operations. A ceasefire was agreed in December after three weeks of fighting, but Thailand has retained control of the area and other Cambodian villages, despite protests from its neighbour, which has condemned its presence as unacceptable and unlawful."

A compound in O'Smach, a Cambodian border town, contained multiple mock-up rooms designed to facilitate large-scale fraud operations. The facility included fake bank branches mimicking Vietnam's OCB bank, counterfeit police offices from Australia, Singapore, and China, along with forged uniforms, badges, and scripts for phone-based scams. Criminal groups operating from this location targeted victims internationally across multiple continents. The Thai military bombed and seized the site during border clashes with Cambodia, claiming it was used for drone operations. Thailand retained control of the area despite Cambodian protests regarding territorial sovereignty and accusations that scam centre concerns were being used as a pretext for military actions.

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