Online recruitment for jobs tied to Cambodia’s scam industry continued in the weeks after the government told foreign diplomats there were currently no industrial online scam compounds remaining in the country, according to a report released Friday by digital security consultant Moses Ngeth.
The report, by Ngeth, who describes himself as an independent digital rights advocate, examined 4,991 job ads posted between April 2023 and July 2026 across 37 public Telegram channels and groups that advertise work in Cambodia. Many of the postings read as ordinary job ads, but Ngeth’s report says the job titles and pay structures match those used inside the country’s scam compounds.
A separate 18-day review conducted by Ngeth from Aug. 28 to Sept. 14 – after Cambodia’s public statement that no compounds remained – found 59 alleged scam job postings for sites in Cambodia among 306 total ads reviewed across five Telegram channels. Of those, 28 were for Poipet, 14 for Sihanoukville, nine for Phnom Penh, and the rest for Pailin, Dara Sakor, Bavet and Siem Reap, with four naming only “Cambodia.” The remaining 193 ads in that same 18-day window were for worksites outside the country, in Malaysia, Myanmar, Laos, Pakistan, the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand.
That shift outside Cambodia shows up in the wider dataset too. From July 2025 to April 2026, about 5% of ads that named a location were for a job outside the country, the report found. From May to July 2026, after an April deadline set by the government for compounds to close had passed, that share rose to 55%, within the same channels and the same recruiters. The government later said the April deadline was not accurate.
“All 37 channels and groups are about work in Cambodia,” the report said. “But 829 ads, one in six, are for a worksite in another country: Malaysia, Myanmar, Laos, Turkey, China, Vietnam, Pakistan, the UAE, Sri Lanka.”
Ad volume rose and fell around several points in the government’s crackdown, which began in July 2025. Postings climbed toward the end of 2025 and peaked in January 2026, before the government’s February “XXL” campaign. Postings then dropped to 394 in February and 343 in March, before rising to 562 in April and 588 in July.
