PHNOM PENH, March 14 – Cambodia has approved its first draft law specifically targeting online scam operations, broadening a crackdown that officials say has already shut about 200 suspected sites since July and extending liability beyond operators to landlords and complicit officials.
The Cabinet approved the bill on March 13, in what Cambodian authorities described as the country’s strongest legal step yet against an industry that has drawn international scrutiny over fraud, human trafficking and forced labor.
Public reporting on the draft says it contains five chapters and 24 articles. Proposed penalties include five to 10 years in prison for organizers of scam sites, 10 to 20 years for aggravated cases involving trafficking, violence or confinement, and up to life imprisonment where deaths are linked to the operations. Lower-level scammers could face two to five years in prison.
Cambodian officials say the draft would also widen liability to property owners who lease premises to scam syndicates and to officials who provide protection or shielding, targeting the support networks that have long allowed scam compounds to operate.
Senior Minister Chhay Sinarith told the Associated Press that since July authorities had targeted 250 suspected scam locations and shut about 200, while filing 79 cases involving 697 alleged ringleaders and associates. Nearly 10,000 workers from 23 countries have been repatriated, according to the same report.
The tougher legal posture has coincided with several high-profile enforcement actions. Reuters reported in January that Cambodia extradited a person identified as Chen Zhi to China after a joint transnational crime investigation, in a case that signaled a willingness to pursue figures beyond low-level operators.
The draft law still requires parliamentary approval.
Its significance lies in Cambodia’s attempt to move beyond periodic raids and deportations toward a more formal legal framework for prosecuting online fraud and those who facilitate it.
The durability of that effort remains uncertain.
The full statutory text has not yet been publicly detailed in a way that clearly establishes the scope of any special investigative powers, including account freezing, telecom-data access or digital-evidence collection. Without that detail, it remains unclear how far the law will reach into the financial channels that allow scam networks to survive repeated crackdowns.
That question is central because the industry is highly adaptive. Analysts have said previous Cambodian crackdowns often left the financial and protection networks intact, allowing operations to reconstitute quickly after raids.
Regional reporting has pointed to a similar risk, with cyberfraud syndicates in East and Southeast Asia shifting operations across borders and into new jurisdictions as enforcement pressure rises in the Mekong region.
For now, Cambodia’s draft law marks a significant escalation in its anti-scam campaign. What remains unresolved is whether the crackdown can break the financial and protection structures that have historically allowed the industry to regenerate.
