Is Cambodia’s Scam Industry Too Big to Fail?

New sanctions on the world’s wealthiest criminal could threaten the Hun dynasty.

Workers ride their motor-cart loaded with glass past a branch of the Prince Bank in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on Oct. 15. December 1, 2025, 12:01 AM Comment icon View Comments ( )

Having your personal advisor indicted by the U.S. Justice Department for orchestrating the largest fraud in history would be career poison to most prime ministers. Not so for Cambodia’s Hun Manet. Under the protection of his government—and that of his father, Hun Sen, before him—a network of more than 250 scam factories has taken root across the country.

Staffed largely by what the United Nations estimates to be more than 100,000 trafficked and forced laborers , these industria

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