Youga, a man who escaped a scam compound in northern O’Smach after running out of options, said he slept on the street for two days in Phnom Penh before reaching help. He had about $100 left, and Caritas took him in—yet he still described the shelter’s conditions as lacking basic items, including pillows and blankets.
AP reported that the shelter is the only one of its kind focused on people leaving scam compounds, a phenomenon that has expanded across Cambodia and neighboring countries. With an “unprecedented surge” of workers leaving the compounds, Caritas has been operating with a reduced workforce and a smaller budget than it had earlier, and it has had to turn away more than 300 people in recent days, Mark Taylor said.
Taylor, who works on human trafficking issues in Cambodia, said the shelter is now handling arrivals like a triage operation. AP said that as of last week the shelter had about 150 people, many sleeping in a common room with only the clothes on their backs, as newly arrived escapees try to survive while they await next steps.
The rush out of the compounds has come alongside intensified pressure on Cambodia’s scam industry and related online fraud. AP said Cambodia’s prime minister, Hun Manet, announced last month that “combating crime is a deliberate political priority” and named cyberfraud, while the government said it deported 1,620 foreign nationals from 21 countries linked to scam operations in January.
Inside the compounds, AP described scam networks using phone setups and scripted recruiting in multiple languages, including fake police booths modeled on countries ranging from Brazil to China. The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights estimated there were up to 100,000 scam workers in 2023, AP reported.
Amnesty International said the mass releases have left people stranded. In a statement, Amnesty’s Montse Ferrer said the situation on the streets amounts to a humanitarian crisis being ignored by Cambodia’s government, describing scenes in which traumatized survivors are left to fend for themselves without state support. Amnesty said it verified videos and images on social media and interviewed 35 victims, who described a “chaotic and dangerous” attempt to leave and noted what Amnesty characterized as a lack of involvement from Cambodian authorities in the mass exodus.
Cambodia’s government disputed that characterization. Neth Pheaktra, the Minister of Information, said the Royal Government of Cambodia rejects claims that it is failing trafficking victims or tolerating abuse linked to scam compounds, and said all individuals are screened to separate victims from perpetrators, with victims receiving protection, shelter, medical care and assistance for safe return.
AP also reported that some people who escaped were trying to reach other organizations for help. Rescuer Li Ling said she had a list of 223 people, mostly from Uganda and Kenya, who had come out from Cambodia’s compounds asking for help to get home. She said she and her partner spent at least $1,000 of their own money to shelter some of the most desperate cases but could not sustain that beyond another week, and that some people later returned to the compounds because otherwise they would have to sleep in the street.
Youga said he was beaten often while inside a compound because he refused to work, and he escaped as releases began. He asked to be identified only by his first name out of fear of his former bosses. AP said it could not independently verify all of his journey, but it reported seeing messages of his pleas for help to the International Organization for Migration, which said it could not comment on individual cases.
Beyond shelter capacity, Taylor said near-term survival needs are becoming urgent—especially food. He said Caritas had been supported by Winrock International, and that the shelter was scheduled to receive $1.4 million from the U.S. Agency for International Development between September 2023 and the first part of 2026, but that funding ended after U.S. foreign assistance was suspended and USAID was dismantled in early 2025. Taylor also said the shelter received partial funding from IOM, which he said has also faced cuts.
AP said many anti-trafficking organizations are registered in Cambodia, but Caritas remains the only one that takes in scam-compound victims in an increasingly repressive environment, under government pressure that AP said has included shutting down independent media and arresting and detaining a prominent journalist. Jacob Daniel Sims, a visiting fellow at the Harvard University Asia Center who has worked on countertrafficking in Cambodia, said there are “an extremely small number of formal organizations willing to respond to the issue on the ground.”
In the days after leaving, AP reported that some people who do not reach shelters end up in immigration detention, stuck and pushed for bribes from officials, while others with funds book hotel rooms in groups. Youga said he cannot return home because he is from the Banyamulenge ethnic group, which he said has been the target of attacks by armed groups, and he said he has no embassy that can help him in the region. He said he was lured into a scam compound in Cambodia in November after he fled Burundi following conflict, and he told AP that his current aim is to find safety and “rebuild my life with dignity.”