<figure id="attachment_409772" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 1108px;" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-409772"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="71a4016f"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2025/01/73dddbfeb59311bef12bd0949e4dc0d3.jpeg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-409772" class="wp-caption-text">Sihanoukville, a city full of ruins.</figcaption></figure>
<h2>A city full of ruins</h2>
Cambodia, a popular tourist destination with the UNESCO World Heritage site Angkor Wat, has in recent years gained notoriety as a hub for crimes such as special fraud. Why has Cambodia become a paradise for criminals? In November 2024, the author walked through hotels and locations that had been used as hideouts by Japanese special fraud groups.
After about five hours on a bus from the capital, Phnom Penh, the port city of Sihanoukville, overlooking the Gulf of Thailand, came into view. Cambodia&#8217;s average temperature is between 25 and 30 degrees Celsius, but on this day, with clear skies, it felt close to 40 degrees. As the bus entered the city, the author noticed an overwhelming number of ruins through the window.
&#8220;Sihanoukville became a key point in China&#8217;s Belt and Road Initiative, rapidly developing into what was expected to be a second Macau with casinos and beach resorts. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Cambodia&#8217;s government&#8217;s online casino regulations, and capital withdrawals due to an economic downturn in mainland China, the development stalled. The dreams of the citizens were shattered,&#8221; said a Sihanoukville city official.
Caught in the turmoil of China&#8217;s ambitions, the city was left filled with ruins. Sihanoukville residents lament the situation.
&#8220;Originally, Sihanoukville was a laid-back beach resort where Cambodians from the city would occasionally visit for leisure. With the development, it transformed into a modern city resembling a Chinese town, and tourists who liked the original atmosphere gradually began to shy away. Moreover, development was halted midway. It has only resulted in negative outcomes.&#8221;
After the failed development, the ruined city began to appear in the news as a hub for special fraud groups. The bust of a Japanese fraud group of 19 people in Sihanoukville in January 2023 is still fresh in memory. This group is believed to have defrauded about 1.07 billion yen from 107 people across 26 prefectures from July 2021 to January 2023.
The author visited the hotel that had been used as a base for the group.
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<div data-friday-nextpage-lead="Why would a group of Japanese stay there..."></div>
<figure id="attachment_409763" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 1477px;" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-409763"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="17fc9f7a"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2025/01/60c267692dbb9640b72a80cb553e909e.jpeg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-409763" class="wp-caption-text">The hotel that is said to have been used as a base by the Japanese fraud group.</figcaption></figure>
<h2>Employees felt a sense of discomfort</h2>
The hotel was located about 20 minutes southeast by car from the city center of Sihanoukville. It was situated by the beach, with white-painted walls and a U-shaped four-story building containing 29 guest rooms. In the hotel’s pool, families were enjoying their vacation. When I checked the accommodation prices on an online travel site, it came to about 10,000 yen per night. Considering that a decent hotel in the city center costs around 6,000 yen, this was quite a high price.
Inside the hotel, there was a simple cafeteria, and when I spoke to one of the employees working there, they remembered the situation at that time.
“I found it strange that a group of Japanese people stayed at our hotel. We didn’t really talk to them, but there was something unsettling about them.”
In Cambodia, it&#8217;s hard to communicate with the locals unless you speak Khmer. If the leader of the fraud group had confiscated the members’ smartphones to prevent their escape, they wouldn’t have been able to use translation apps, making it impossible to converse with the employees.
Surrounding the hotel, like in the center of Sihanoukville, there were unfinished hotels, shopping malls, and other resort-related facilities that had been abandoned mid-construction. The area was full of ruins and deserted, which might have been convenient for criminal groups.
In the next part, we will cover the local report from Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, which, like Sihanoukville, is said to be home to many criminal group bases.
<a href="https://friday.kodansha.co.jp/article/409785">[Read Part 2] Leading Japanese to backdoor bank account openings. Cambodia’s fragile national foundation, a paradise for criminals.</a>
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 Eiya Takeya (freelance journalist)

 Although Cambodia is a popular tourist destination with the World Heritage Site of Angkor Wat, it has been described as a "paradise for criminals" in recent years. Why are criminal groups roaming Cambodia now? Our reportage on the ground reveals the reasons.

 In Cambodia, the number of special frauds by Japanese has been increasing rapidly in recent years. Eiya Takeya, a freelance journalist, takes a closer look behind the scenes.

Cambodia’s Stalled Development Turns It Into a Criminal Haven

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