October 15, 2025

he Khmer Movement for Democracy (KMD) strongly welcomes the proposed “Dismantle Foreign Scam Syndicates Act” which seeks the creation of an US government interagency taskforce to tackle cybercrime in Southeast Asia.

The act was introduced in September by Republican congressman for Indiana Jefferson Shreeve. As well as defining a strategy to eliminate the scam centers concentrated in Burma, Laos, and Cambodia, the taskforce will be charged with holding accountable corrupt officials, state, and non-state actors involved in cyber-crime and the human trafficking which underpins it.

Americans lost $10 billion to cyber-scams in 2024, according to the act. It estimates that global losses run to over $60 billion per year.

The act describes Burma, Laos, and Cambodia as “corrupt and repressive countries where transparency is absent, rule of law is anemic and checks and balances are non-existent.” The result is that organized crime operates as a joint venture between Chinese Mafia gangs and the corrupt governments, it says.

The human costs of these criminal joint ventures are incalculable. In the eight months to August 2025, South Korea alone had 330 cases of its nationals reported to have been kidnapped in Cambodia. A South Korean university student was found dead in Cambodia’s Kampot province in August having been lured with a fake job offer. His body showed signs of having been tortured before his death.

In June, Amnesty International published research based on interviews with 58 survivors of cyberscam compounds in Cambodia, of eight different nationalities. Nine of them were children. Forty of the 58 survivors had suffered torture or other ill-treatment.

The US act identifies a range of senior officials in the Hun family regime, and organizations with close ties to the government, as candidates for Magnitsky-style sanctions. These include Neth Savoeun, police chief from 2008 to 2023 and now a deputy prime minister, Sar Sokha, minister of the interior and deputy prime minister, Dy Vichea, deputy police chief and the husband of Hun Sen’s daughter, and Hun To, a cousin of prime minister Hun Manet.

Also named in the act are The Prince Group, founded by Chen Zhi, a Chinese businessman who has served as an advisor to Hun Sen, and Huione, a financial services conglomerate in which Hun To has held the role of director, and which has been described as a one-stop shop supplying all the tools for cyber-crime.  

The KMD urges the adoption of the act as soon as possible. We welcome the act’s proposal for the US to co-ordinate with allies and partners to combat online scam operations, and to work with them to establish similar task forces and working groups. In the case of Hun To, the KMD strongly urges Australia to cooperate with US investigations and to share all relevant information.  

We call on governments globally to intensify their efforts to warn their nationals of the dangers of accepting work from unknown employers in Southeast Asia, and to follow the US in using Magnitsky type sanctions to punish all those who benefit from their enslavement.