Chinese scam suspects took over Cambodia condo
PHNOM PENH: No sooner had the 11-storey apartment building in Phnom Penh’s affluent Tuol Kouk district been finished than dozens of young Chinese men and women moved in loaded with desks and laptops, said neighbours.
“I thought they were moving an office in,” said Eng Somnang, 20, who owns a noodle soup shop directly opposite and watched them arrive early this month.
Police in the Cambodian capital accuse them of doing exactly that: setting up a criminal call centre with more than 200 Chinese nationals to carry out a telephone and Internet scam on victims in China.
Police raided the building to stop what they said was the latest operation of a type that has duped people out of billions of dollars – with scammers operating from countries that have good internet access and relaxed visa rules.
From a balcony of the building in Phnom Penh, some of the suspects told Reuters they had not been given food and police were not allowing them to leave.
One of the suspects, Fang, 30, from China, said she came to Cambodia on a tourist visa.
She said there were more than 200 people inside the building but declined to answer questions about what they had been doing there.
Police said they had arrested 225 Chinese nationals, 25 of them women, on suspicion of using internet voice calls for an extortion scheme.
They will be sent to China to face justice, police investigators said.
Since 2011, Cambodia has deported 800 people from mainland China and Taiwan, arrested on suspicion of telecoms scams.
Neighbours in Tuol Kouk, dotted with large villas, described the occupants of the building as quiet.
They said it had been rented out to tenants for US$25,000 a month. The owner was not available to comment.
The occupants kept to themselves, venturing out only at night to get food, neighbours said.
“They were mostly men, some women. Maybe 20, 23 years old young,” said Eng Somnang.
“When people delivered food to them they were not allowed inside.”
In the past, Chinese fraud suspects have often entered Cambodia on tourist visas, said Uk Haisela, chief of investigation at Cambodia’s immigration department.
The victims of the scammers were often civil servants and retired officials from mainland China, he said.
One of the suspected telephone fraudster who Uk Haisela interrogated said he made up to US$70,000 per week. — Reuters