Cambodia deepens cyber scam crackdown with closure of 91 casino-linked locations

Cambodia has intensified its anti-cyberscam campaign, with the government saying enforcement over the past nine months has included the closure of 91 casino locations tied to online scam activity as authorities push a broader effort to dismantle the country’s scam infrastructure.

The latest official update came on April 24, when the Office of the Spokesperson of the Royal Government said that, from July 2025 to mid-April 2026, Cambodian authorities had cracked down on more than 250 online scam cases nationwide. According to that statement, the campaign included the closure of 91 casino locations, the filing of 112 court cases, and proceedings involving around 1,089 suspects of multiple nationalities.

That marks a notable escalation from figures highlighted earlier in March. At that stage, the Secretariat of the Commission for Combating Online Scams said nationwide operations had led to the closure of 236 scam-linked locations, including 91 casino sites and 145 other premises such as villas, condominiums and residential properties. The same March briefing said Cambodian courts had handled 79 scam-related cases over the previous eight months, involving 697 ringleaders and accomplices.

The crackdown is also being measured through deportations and worker exits. In the April 24 government statement, Cambodia said authorities had completed procedures to deport 13,039 foreign nationals of 33 nationalities linked to online scams from early 2025 to April 19, 2026. The same statement added that 241,888 individuals had voluntarily left Cambodia between mid-January and April 19, a figure the government presented as part of the broader dismantling of scam networks.

This enforcement wave is unfolding alongside a harder legal line. In late March, Cambodian lawmakers approved the country’s first law specifically targeting online scam operations, with prison terms reaching up to life in the most serious cases involving trafficking, violence or deaths. Officials have framed the legislation as a necessary response to a criminal industry that has damaged Cambodia’s international reputation and is closely linked to coercion and human trafficking.

The significance of the 91 casino closures lies in what they suggest about the structure of the scam economy. For years, analysts and investigators have pointed to casinos and casino-adjacent compounds as key physical bases for transnational cyberfraud in Cambodia. By explicitly linking 91 casino locations to the current crackdown, the government is signaling that it wants to show progress not just against individual scam workers, but against the commercial sites believed to have hosted or enabled those operations. Whether that translates into a lasting reduction will depend on whether enforcement continues to hit the financial and protection networks behind the compounds, not only the sites themselves.