Cambodia: Hundreds of Indians rescued from cyber-scam factories
The Indian government has, to date, facilitated the rescue of 250 Indian citizens in Cambodia who were coerced into engaging in online scams.
According to India’s foreign ministry, these individuals were initially promised legitimate employment but were compelled to participate in illicit cyber activities.
Recent reports indicate that over 5,000 Indians stranded in Cambodia were coerced into operating fraudulent schemes online. It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of individuals worldwide have fallen victim to human traffickers orchestrating job scams in Southeast Asia.
Most of the victims, who are predominantly young and proficient in technology, are enticed with job offers and subsequently drawn into illegal online activities, including money laundering, cryptocurrency fraud, and romance scams, where they assume false identities to establish online romantic relationships.
A United Nations report released in August 2023 revealed that at least 120,000 people in Myanmar and another 100,000 in Cambodia were forced into participating in cyber-fraud operations.
This incident marks the latest in a series of rescues of such victims in Southeast Asia. In March, law enforcement authorities rescued hundreds of individuals from a fraudulent operation in the Philippines, where they were compelled to engage in deceptive online romance schemes. Just a few weeks prior, China repatriated hundreds of its citizens who were held in scam centers in Myanmar.
Over the weekend, Randhir Jaiswal, spokesperson of India’s foreign ministry, said that the country was working closely with Cambodian authorities to “crack down on those responsible for these fraudulent schemes”.
India said it had rescued 75 people in the past three months while the timeline for the rest isn’t clear.
The BBC has emailed the Cambodian embassy in India for comment.
Last week, the Indian Express newspaper reported that India’s embassy in Phnom Penh had received 130 complaints of Indians being held in Cambodia against their will.
They were among thousands of others who were allegedly forced to scam people in India or in some cases, extort money from them by pretending to be law enforcement officials.
The victims in India had been duped of a total of at least 5bn rupees ($59m; £47m) in the past six months, the newspaper reported.
In another report, the paper quoted an official in India’s embassy in Cambodia as saying that they received four-five complaints every day on average from people trapped in Cambodia after being offered jobs.
One of the rescued men, identified only as Stephen, told the newspaper that he was recruited by an agent from the southern Indian city of Mangaluru and offered a data entry job in Cambodia.
After reaching the country, he says he was asked to create fake social media accounts with photographs of women and use them to contact people.
