A compound the size of Times Square, ringed with barbed wire, guard towers, and CCTV cameras — abandoned almost overnight. This is what 20,000 forced workers left behind when Cambodia's crackdown began.
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The episode opens with Shibani Mahtani narrating her walk through an industrial compound outside Phnom Penh — barbed wire, CCTV towers, lookout posts, bars on dormitory windows, and mountains of trash left behind in a hasty departure [1] — Shibani Mahtani "A compound the size of Times Square, ringed with barbed wire, guard towers, and CCTV cameras — abandoned almost overnight. This is what 20,…" 00:07 . Aisha Roscoe provides the macro context: the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center found the cyber scam industry stole more than $20 billion from Americans in 2025, and in 2024 the industry's profits equaled roughly half of Cambodia's formal GDP [2] — Aisha Roscoe "The FBI reported Americans lost more than $20 billion to cyber scams in 2025. In 2024, the profits from these compounds equaled roughly hal…" 01:05 . More than 200,000 workers have poured into the streets of Phnom Penh since Cambodia's crackdown accelerated, giving reporters like Mahtani unprecedented access. The episode promises a two-part deep dive told not from the perspective of fraud victims, but from the workers who carried out the scams — a deliberately inverted vantage point that promises to illuminate how a criminal industry of this scale actually functions.
The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center reported that the cyber scam industry defrauded Americans of more than $20 billion in 2025 alone.
The FBI reported Americans lost more than $20 billion to cyber scams in 2025. In 2024, the profits from these compounds equaled roughly half of Cambodia's entire formal GDP — a staggering measure of how entrenched the industry had become.
In 2024, experts estimated that profits from the cyber scamming industry were equivalent to roughly half of Cambodia's formal GDP.
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