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.
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At 1:05 · chapter starts 0:00
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.
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.
The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center reported that the cyber scam industry defrauded Americans of more than $20 billion in 2025 alone.
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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