O'SMACH, Cambodia — I have often used the word industrial-scale in my own writing to describe the scam compounds that dot this region in Southeast Asia.
But the weight of that phrase truly sunk in at the O’Smach Resort complex that we visited on Tuesday.
Thailand's military, which conducted a tour for the media, said that the whole area encompasses around 197 acres (80 hectares), equivalent to 150 American football fields.
It wasn't my first time at a scam center, but its scale dwarfed anything I had seen before.
From my base in the region, I have followed this issue for the past few years, watching its scale only grow larger and larger.
Scam compounds have mushroomed across Southeast Asia since the pandemic.
Inside these industrial-scale complexes, workers attempt to lure unsuspecting targets from countries all across the world in sophisticated online-based scams.
The latest estimates from the U.N.
office on Human Rights are that around 300,000 workers are caught up in the industry regionally.
Thailand’s military invited journalists back to the huge scam complex it seized in December during its border conflict with Cambodia.
The military said it took the area in response to the Cambodian side using it as a base of operations for launching attacks.
The complex was called the O’Smach Resort, owned by Cambodian politician Ly Yong Phat, who faces U.S.
sanctions for rights abuses in the very same complex.
It's unclear, however, whether the new construction also belongs to Ly.
Throughout the massive grounds of the self-contained town,....
