Beyond O’Smach: Thailand Must Confront Its Own Scam Problem Too

Beyond O’Smach: Thailand Must Confront Its Own Scam Problem Too

Thailand has repeatedly drawn international attention to scam compounds along its border with Cambodia. In recent months, Thai authorities have taken journalists and the ASEAN Observer Team to the O’Smach area, presenting what they described as evidence of large-scale scam operations, including fake police stations and other facilities allegedly used by criminal networks.

There is no question that transnational scam networks are a serious regional threat. But if Thailand wants the world to understand the scale of this problem, it is equally important to look beyond Cambodia.

On Wednesday night, Thai immigration police raided a luxury mansion in Bangkok’s Bang Bon district and detained 15 people allegedly operating a call-centre scam targeting Japanese victims. The group included Thai and foreign nationals, while police were searching for a suspected Chinese organiser believed to remain in Thailand.

What investigators reportedly found inside the mansion was striking: Japanese-language scam scripts, fake Japanese police uniforms and identification materials, phones, SIM cards, computers and even drugs. The mansion was reportedly rented for about 900,000 baht a month. Japanese media likewise reported that the operation appeared to target Japanese victims and that fake police uniforms and manuals were seized.

Most importantly, one of the 15 suspects was Thai. The case illustrates a basic reality of transnational organised crime: the nationality of a criminal network, its victims and the country where its infrastructure is located do not necessarily match.

This is why comparisons over which country has “more” scams can become misleading.

Some Thai and international reports have cited estimates that Cambodian scam revenues could be equivalent to as much as 60% of Cambodia’s GDP. That figure has been widely repeated, including recently in commentary and by US lawmakers, but it refers to an estimated value compared with GDP, not money literally counted as part of Cambodia’s GDP.

If such estimates are used to portray Cambodia as uniquely responsible for the regional scam economy, the same question should be asked of every jurisdiction through which these networks operate: Where are the organisers? Where does the money move? Where are the recruitment networks? Where are the financial accounts, shell companies, properties and safe houses?

Thailand itself has acknowledged the scale of the problem. A Thai economic expert estimated in 2025 that transactions connected to scam networks could exceed 1 trillion baht annually in Thailand, equivalent to around 10% of GDP, while stressing the economic damage caused by the grey-market economy.

Cambodia, meanwhile, has continued deporting foreign nationals linked to online scams. In August alone, Cambodian authorities said they dismantled 85 remaining small-scale scam locations, arrested 1,255 suspects from 13 nationalities — including 53 Thai nationals — and began deportation procedures for 2,005 illegal foreign nationals, 574 of whom were identified as involved in online scams.

The lesson should therefore be straightforward: scamming is not a Cambodian problem, a Thai problem or a Chinese problem. It is a transnational organised-crime problem.

Criminal syndicates exploit weak enforcement, vulnerable populations, corrupt officials, cross-border financial systems and gaps between national jurisdictions. They can establish operations in one country, recruit workers from another, target victims somewhere else and move their proceeds through several more jurisdictions.

That reality demands cooperation, not competing narratives.

Thailand and Cambodia have a direct interest in strengthening law-enforcement cooperation, sharing intelligence, tracking financial flows, coordinating investigations and pursuing ringleaders across borders. Joint action will do more to dismantle these networks than repeatedly pointing at each other.

The Bangkok mansion raid should therefore not simply become another argument over which country is the bigger “scam hub.” It should be a reminder that no country is immune — and no country can defeat transnational scam networks alone.

By: Keo Chesday, Affiliate Researcher at the University of Cambodia