Vietnamese Police Disrupt Online Scam Operations Relocating From Cambodia

Vietnamese authorities have in recent days disrupted two groups attempting to set up online ‌scamming operations in the north of the country, in what they suggested was a possible sign of overflow from the anti-scam crackdowns next door in Cambodia.

Police in Lao Cai province said yesterday that provincial investigators had recently raided a local hotel where a scam gang was attempting to establish a cyberfraud operation, the state media outlet Tuoi Tre reported.

The raid took place on Friday, right as the group began running scam operations, which targeted Chinese citizens seeking loans. “Members allegedly posed as employees of loan apps, instructed victims on application procedures, and then defrauded them of their money,” the report stated.

The gang comprised 19 Chinese nationals led by a man identified as Wang Xiangsheng, who had moved from Cambodia to Vietnam to engage in online scams.

Investigators were alerted to the operation when a group entered Vietnam from Cambodia, through the Moc Bai Border Gate in southern Vietnam, before traveling north to Lao Cai, which borders China.

All 19 were arrested during the raid. Police also seized 23 laptop computers, 26 mobile phones, eight 5G signal broadcasting devices, and a host of other equipment.

The raid was just the latest law enforcement action targeting new scam operations linked to Cambodia-based criminal syndicates. In recent years, Cambodia has become a hub of online fraud operations, which are run predominantly by Chinese criminal syndicates and rely on a huge corps of trafficked workers from across the globe. These operations have flourished due to alleged protection from senior government officials and prominent tycoons with close links to the ruling Cambodian People’s Party. At its height, the industry involved tens of thousands of trafficked workers, factory-sized scam compounds, and profits equivalent to as much as 40 percent of Cambodia’s GDP.

However, under pressure from both China and the United States, and paying a mounting reputational cost for its association with cyber-fraud, the Cambodian government has announced plans to root out the scamming industry.

While there have been questions about the legitimacy of the crackdown – Amnesty International said in a report last week that the campaign had so far “failed to dismantle the vast majority of sites in the country” – it has clearly gone much further than the previous cosmetic law enforcement operations of the past few years. This has likely prompted many scam operations to pack up and seek more accommodating jurisdictions.

Vietnam appears to be an attractive alternative, albeit not the only one. Yesterday’s announcement came after the Ministry of Public Security announced that police in Phu Tho province, which neighbors Lao Cai, had also “uncovered and disrupted a group of foreign nationals suspected of involvement in a high-tech online scam network with plans to establish a long-term operational presence in Vietnam,” according to another Tuoi Tre report.

In a statement on Thursday, the Ministry announced that the investigation began after the immigration management agency and local police in Tam Dao commune detected unusual accommodation arrangements involving multiple resorts, farm stays, and villas in Hanoi, Phu Tho, and Lao Cai. Preliminary findings “revealed that the suspects were linked to online fraud organizations previously operating in Cambodia,” the report added.

As in the Lao Cai case, the police seized a large amount of equipment, including 73 computers, 134 mobile phones, and 34 USB storage devices. Four people were arrested as part of the investigation, including a Chinese national named Zhao Weizhong and three ‌Vietnamese.

In a separate case cited by Reuters, police in Ho Chi Minh City last week detected 83 Chinese nationals staying at a hotel in the city, allegedly preparing to set ​up ⁠an online scam center there. In March, state media also reported the breakup of three Chinese-run online scam rings in Vietnam’s Bac Ninh province, which also borders China, arresting 43 suspects.

These raids are notable insofar as Vietnam has been relatively free from online scamming activities up until now, at least on the scale of Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar, and suggest that Phnom Penh’s ongoing crackdown is serious enough to make Cambodia much less attractive to criminal syndicates. They also suggest that, along with the recent rise in scamming operations in Sri Lanka, the dispersal of the Cambodian scam economy is likely to continue having spillover effects in other parts of the region for months – and possibly years – to come.