Thousands of people were once trapped inside a sprawling scam compound on the Cambodia-Thailand border, where trafficking victims say passports were confiscated, workers were beaten and shocked with electricity, and those who failed to meet fraud quotas faced brutal punishment.
One former worker, Pornpen Aimhum, offered a stark warning to anyone considering work at Cambodia’s O’Smach compound. “No, don’t go. It’s clearly hell,” she told Reuters. Describing what happened to people trapped there, she added that some managed to escape, while “the unlucky others were never seen again.”
Thai military officials have now opened the massive O’Smach complex to international journalists and ASEAN observers, offering a rare look inside an operation authorities say once housed about 10,000 people. Visitors were shown fake police stations, detention cells, scam workrooms and a Chinese-language hospital that Thai officials suspect may have been connected to organ trafficking.
Workers trapped in an industrial-scale fraud operation
The abuses associated with O’Smach were documented long before Thai forces seized the site during fighting with Cambodia in December 2025.
In September 2024, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Cambodian businessman Ly Yong Phat, his L.Y.P. Group and O-Smach Resort over what Washington described as “serious human rights abuse” linked to trafficked workers. Victims reported having their passports and phones confiscated before being forced to carry out online scams.
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Some workers were beaten, shocked with electric batons or subjected to other abuse when they failed to meet quotas. The Treasury said victims reported being threatened with being sold to other scam operations, while two people reportedly jumped to their deaths from buildings after being forced to work.
Acting Under Secretary of the Treasury Bradley Smith said the United States was committed to holding accountable those responsible for “human trafficking and other abuses” while disrupting the financial networks supporting the operations.
An Associated Press correspondent who later visited O’Smach described what appeared to be an enormous industrial operation, saying “its scale dwarfed anything I had seen before.”
The compound covers more than 80 hectares and contains 157 buildings, including 29 Thai authorities identified as having been used for telecommunications fraud, according to Thailand’s The Nation.
Fake police stations and rooms built for deception
When Air Chief Marshal Prapas Sornchaidee led Thai and foreign journalists and members of an ASEAN Observer Team into O’Smach on Sept. 7, they found evidence showing how elaborate the scams had become.
Rooms had been constructed to imitate police stations and interrogation facilities in China, Australia, Singapore, Indonesia, Brazil, Vietnam and other countries. They contained police uniforms, scripted conversations, imitation interrogation rooms and other props designed to convince victims that scammers were legitimate law-enforcement officers.
Workrooms contained rows of tightly packed desks in cramped and windowless spaces. Hundreds of notebooks reportedly contained handwritten Chinese. In one area, the words “I want to go home” had been written in Chinese on a wall.
Thai officials also showed visitors detention facilities and equipment they said had been used to punish people working inside the compound.
The picture that emerged was not simply of a cybercrime operation, but of a physical system designed to recruit, confine and coerce people into carrying out fraud.
Hospital raises disturbing new questions
One discovery has raised an even more serious allegation.
Inside the compound is a facility identified as Zhong Nan Hospital, containing an operating room, pharmacy, X-ray facilities and examination rooms. Much of the signage is written in Chinese.
Thai authorities said the hospital had been used to treat senior Chinese figures involved in the scam operation but are also investigating whether the operating room could have had another purpose.
According to Nation TV, Thai police suspect organs such as kidneys or hearts may have been removed from scam workers who had been badly injured or tortured after failing to meet quotas and then sold for profit.
That allegation has not been established by publicly released forensic evidence.
But threats involving organ removal have surfaced previously in accounts from Southeast Asia’s scam industry. A United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime report noted reports of trafficking victims being threatened with organ removal for failing to meet fraud quotas, while cautioning that evidence of actual organ trafficking remained “anecdotal” and that “more research is required.”
Determining what happened inside the O’Smach hospital will require testimony, medical records, forensic evidence and financial investigations.
Thailand calls for wider investigation
Thai officials say evidence recovered at O’Smach should now become part of a broader international investigation into the criminal networks behind the compound.
Prapas said material gathered at the site could help investigators in Europe, Asia and elsewhere trace money and identify those responsible.
“These are not simply allegations,” he said, pointing to evidence Thai authorities say could support asset seizures, disruption of financial networks and further criminal investigations.
Thailand has also rejected Cambodian accusations that it is using the scam centers as a justification for holding Cambodian territory.
“We are not using this issue to try to control Cambodian territory,” Prapas said. Thai officials say six Cambodian military positions were discovered inside the larger compound and accuse Cambodian forces of using the area to store weapons, position snipers and conduct drone attacks.
Prapas also questioned how Cambodian authorities could have been unaware of an enormous operation involving scores of buildings and thousands of workers.
Asked whether Cambodian authorities had helped sustain the scam industry, he replied: “You have said it yourself.”
Cambodia disputes Thailand’s portrayal of the site. Cambodian Information Minister Neth Pheaktra has argued that allowing journalists into territory controlled by Thai forces does not constitute independent verification.
“You can control the site. You can organise the visit,” he said. “A scenario can be staged. The truth cannot.”
What happened to many of the people who once lived and worked at O’Smach remains unclear.
But testimony from survivors, U.S. sanctions and evidence recovered from the site have already documented an operation in which fraud was intertwined with human trafficking, forced labor and severe physical abuse.
For the people who were trapped there, the sprawling collection of buildings was not simply a scam center.
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