Twenty-seven Chinese and Taiwanese nationals were arrested during a raid on a villa in Phnom Penh’s Chamkar Mon district on Monday on suspicion of operating an internet-phone scam, officials said.
The 15 Chinese and 12 Taiwanese men and women were apprehended at the villa on Street 430 at about 1 p.m. following a tip-off from Chinese authorities, according to Khun Sambor, deputy director of the Interior Ministry’s immigration department.
“We arrested them because they committed the crime of illegally extorting money, but we don’t have detailed information about them yet,” he said. “We confiscated some VoIP equipment that they were using for extortion,” he added, referring to Voice over Internet Protocol technology—a favored tool among scammers for its ability to mask the source of calls.
Uk Heisela, chief of investigations at the immigration department, said police had been monitoring the group since Chinese authorities raised the alarm more than a month ago.
“Now we need to question them to find out how many of them committed the crime. And if there are others who do not have the documents [necessary] to live in the country, we will deport them,” he said.
Cambodia has become a hotbed of long-distance extortion rings in recent years, and local authorities regularly cooperate with Chinese police to root out large groups of Chinese scammers that use VoIP technology to defraud citizens in their home country.
In one of the largest-ever cases, 168 Chinese nationals were arrested in Sihanoukville in November and subsequently deported home. In March, 38 others were arrested at an under-construction casino in Poipet City and also deported.
