Thailand finds Brazilian Federal Police ‘station’ inside online scam center in Southeast Asia

Room that imitates a Federal Police station is found in an online scam center on the border between Thailand and Cambodia LILLIAN SUWANRUMPHA / AFP Broken computer monitors in bombed-out offices, fake police uniforms scattered around, fake hundred-dollar bills and even a room set up to imitate a Brazilian Federal Police station: these are the traces of a hurried escape by alleged cybercriminals who abandoned a resort on the border between Cambodia and Thailand. ✅ Follow g1’s international news channel on WhatsApp Southeast Asia has become the epicenter of the billion-dollar online scam industry, in which hundreds of thousands of scammers – some victims of human trafficking, others volunteer workers – dupe internet users around the world with romance and cryptocurrency investment schemes. The Thai police did not explain, however, the exact role of the fake police station in carrying out the scams. This Thursday (12), the AFP agency was invited to a visit organized by the Thai Army to an area of ​​O’Smach, in Cambodia, which Thai forces captured during border clashes last year. Thailand claims that the area was used as a base of operations by the Cambodian Army and also by criminals conducting transnational scams. See the videos that are trending on g1 The two neighboring countries clashed on the disputed border over three weeks in December 2025, in the latest episode of a long-running conflict. Thailand said that month that its forces struck several casinos across the border, alleging they were used as weapons depots and firing positions by Cambodian forces. At least two were identified by observers as fronts that operated as online scam centers. “It was by coincidence — the attack on these facilities occurred because they were used as military bases by Cambodian forces,” Thai Defense Ministry spokesman Surasant Kongsiri told reporters during the visit. When Thai troops moved in to neutralize the threat from the Cambodian side, “they discovered that the facilities behind the casinos were scam centers,” he said. Since a fragile truce was agreed at the end of December, the Thai army has maintained a presence in the area – despite Cambodia’s repeated requests for Thailand to withdraw its troops from O’Smach and other border areas previously controlled by the country. Cambodia’s Information Minister Neth Pheaktra accused Thailand of trying to justify its “de facto annexation” of Cambodian territory “under the pretext of operations against online scams.” “These actions represent a dangerous use of law enforcement narratives to justify military incursions,” he said in a statement to AFP on Thursday. Coup scripts and telephone directories The destruction and rubble that remains in O’Smach more than two months after the fighting ended indicate a hasty flight by thousands of people. Journalists were taken through offices and dormitories with bunk beds where the tools used in the coups were left behind: fake scenarios of police offices in Brazil, Australia, Canada and India, scripts for coup calls and stacks of papers with telephone numbers of targets around the world. The Thai military said about 20,000 suspected coup plotters living there escaped shortly before the missiles hit the area. Room inside online scam centers on the border between Thailand and Cambodia imitates Chinese police station LILLIAN SUWANRUMPHA / AFP According to an analyst interviewed by AFP in December, O’Smach and other casino complexes attacked by Thailand during the fighting could house thousands of victims of human trafficking. The locations visited this Thursday – accommodation for coup plotters from Vietnam and Indonesia and offices for Chinese bosses, according to the Thai military – were opposite the O’Smach resort and casino, owned by Cambodian senator and businessman Ly Yong Phat. He was targeted by Washington in 2024 for sanctions over his company’s alleged role in “serious human rights abuses related to the treatment of trafficked workers subjected to forced labor in online scam centers,” according to US officials. In November, Ly Yong Phat denied reports linking him to cybercrime and money laundering networks, classifying the accusations as “false and harmful to his reputation” in an interview with a Cambodian media outlet. Prapas Sornchaidee of the Thai Air Force said Cambodia – which has pledged to eliminate coup operations before May – should recognize the proliferation of these activities and seek international support to combat them. “If Cambodia recognized that these activities are occurring and that it cannot control them, and coordinated with Thailand and other countries to address the problem, it would be much better,” he said.

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