Foreign Correspondent: Mar 16

This week on Foreign Correspondent Mary Ann Jolley travels to the seaside resort of Sihanoukville in Cambodia where people are lured into working for scam syndicates.

What happens when you fall victim to a cyber scam? And who’s really at fault? In Cambodia, Chinese organised crime syndicates, with strong ties to the Hun Sen regime, are running widespread cyber scam operations in the city of Sihanoukville. Hundreds of scammers in complexes surrounded by barbed wire work 15-hour days targeting vulnerable people with fake information to access their money.

But the workers in this billion-dollar corrupt business are also victims. On Foreign Correspondent reporter Mary Ann Jolley meets the scammers who are lured to Cambodia with the promise of a good job – only to find they have been sold to scam syndicates. They are then held against their will and forced to scam across the world. Complaints to Cambodian authorities fall on deaf ears with allegations officials are complicit in the operations.

8pm Thursday on ABC.