Seoul
—
Dex didn’t see himself as a scammer.
For the first two months at his new job in Cambodia, he followed orders. Each day, he sat before his screen, firing off scripted messages, moving from one far-away stranger to the next. Seated around him, row after row, were fellow South Koreans doing the same.
With his phone and passport confiscated and guards patrolling the fenced compound, escape seemed impossible. And besides, he needed the money.
When he had first headed to Cambodia, he thought it was “just a shady messaging job for a stock investment group. I didn’t realize it was an actual fraud,” Dex told CNN.
“When I arrived, they said there are two types of scams, romance and stock investment – and they run both.”
Dex, whose name has been changed to protect his identity, had joined the hundreds of South Koreans drawn into sprawling scam networks run by Chinese crime syndicates operating across porous border regions in Southeast Asia. Many, like him, were lured by fake job postings promising quick riches – only to end up trapped and forced to run scams in their native language.
Through them, the scam operations siphoned tens of millions of dollars from South Koreans last year, wiping out savings and ruining lives – just one branch of a multibillion-dollar global scam network that has scalped victims and bedeviled law enforcement around the world in recent years.
Now, having escaped, Dex has joined forces with some of the victims of his very compound, to build a case for the prosecution of the ringleaders of the Korean-language scam operation, two of whom were repatriated to South Korea on Friday.
CNN reviewed worksheets Dex provided that listed daily quotas; confirmed his identity through defrauded victims; and reviewed hundreds of screenshots that victims shared of their conversations with scammers, along with police reports, court documents and recorded calls from cases traced back to Cambodia-based networks.
Dex, who is in his early 30s, entered the compound in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh around April 2024, after responding to a Telegram ad for what looked like a stock investment chatroom job.
The post, reviewed by CNN, promised around $2,000 a month for “chatters” and up to $10,000 for “callers” and “investment experts” – far above the average wage in South Korea.
As Dex soon found out, he would be enacting so-called pig-butchering scams, drawing victims in with false affection and fabricated investment gains before gutting them with devastating financial losses.
The remote and often anarchic border regions of Southeast Asian nations including Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar have become hotbeds of this kind of 21st-century swindle – and business is booming, with multiple compounds opening and relocating as needed.
Southeast Asian scam networks siphoned at least $10 billion from Americans in 2024 alone, according to the US Treasury Department. In 2023, South Koreans lost about $148 million to the operations, the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime reported.
Dex was instructed to pose as a woman, chat over messaging apps with male targets, and steer them toward fake stock‑trading platforms.
In their first two months on the job, chatters like Dex typically engaged with about 100 people, strictly following scripts to gauge the size of potential victims’ savings. By the third month, the most promising targets – fewer than two dozen – were lured onto the organization’s fake trading platform.
Each transfer from a victim was announced with the strike of a massive gong, Dex said. One hit meant roughly $6,900 earned.
Ideal targets were “men in their 50s,” he said. They generally had accumulated assets, and “rarely get the chance to talk to women in their 30s.”
In May 2024, shortly after his 50th birthday, Hoon received a Facebook message from a woman who introduced herself as a 38-year-old beauty shop owner in Seoul. Her profile photo showed a heart‑shaped face, dark hair tucked behind one ear.
Hoon – whose name has been changed to protect his identity – told the woman he felt unworthy of her attention, calling himself plain and inexperienced when it came to women like her. When she reassured him, he leaned in further, calling her “far too beautiful for someone like me,” and asking why she would choose to talk to a man with “nothing to offer.”
She answered with affection, calling him her “boyfriend,” and mapping out a future of marriage, a home together and visits to parents. When he floated doubts raised by friends, she urged him to ignore them, insisting their happiness should stay “between the two of us.”
Within weeks, they were sending good-morning and good-night texts. Their chats filled the quiet spaces of his days. He told her about his security job far outside the South Korean capital. She gently teased him for being shy.
Then came an invite. She said she’d been watching live YouTube lectures led by an instructor and sent him screenshots of what she claimed were profits from foreign‑exchange trades – hundreds of thousands one day, millions the next – and coaxed him to join, insisting the platform was safe.
“There’s even a $300 bonus if you open an account,” she said.
Hoon hesitated. She assured him she had put in $100,000 of her savings and encouraged him to start small: $700 would do.
Soon, she connected him with an “assistant,” who added him to a group chat where investors were guided through live sessions and foreign exchange trades. Hoon wired about $6,800 to a bank account, the first in a series of transfers that would eventually drain $145,000 of his savings.
When he realized he was being scammed, the beauty shop owner threatened him over a fake deposit she claimed to have made to his account, before disappearing.
About 3,500 kilometers away, somewhere in Phnom Penh, someone was almost certainly whacking a gong.
More than 330 South Koreans went missing in Cambodia last year, and while most have been found, 79 remain unaccounted for, South Korea’s national security director Wi Sung‑lac said. Some, Wi added, had knowingly traveled to Cambodia to take part in illicit operations, and even returned after being repatriated.
Roughly 200,000 workers of various nationalities labor in these compounds, including some 1,000 South Koreans, Wi said.
“Koreans are highly valued because they work efficiently and hit targets quickly,” Ok Hae-shil, a Christian missionary who has spent 14 years in Cambodia and helped captives return home, told CNN. He has watched young Koreans, lured by supposed six‑figure salaries in online forums, arrive and disappear into the compounds.
For some, falling into these networks starts with crippling debt. Park Ki-tae, a debt lawyer advising escapees facing bankruptcy, pointed to the despair among South Korea’s debt‑burdened youth.
His three recent clients – men in their mid‑20s from a province outside Seoul – were drawn in by job ads or friends abroad, only to be “abducted” or “coerced” into online fraud.
“All three were already in debt,” Park told CNN, noting the troubles faced by many younger people domestically.
Dex’s workdays stretched from 7:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. The packed office was almost entirely men, with two women both assigned to voice and video calls.
A deep-faked “investment expert,” operated by one of the alleged ringleaders, Kang Da-wit, hosted daily YouTube live sessions with artificially inflated view counts. Team leaders, posing as exchange staff, directed victims like Hoon to deposit funds into mule accounts whose bank numbers changed constantly, Dex said.
The scam network in Borey Boao, Dex’s compound, was overseen by a main ringleader who coordinated the scheme alongside unidentified Chinese colleagues, according to court records. Other ringleaders handled day‑to‑day functions, including scriptwriting and coaching workers, as well as staffing and confiscating passports, records show.
South Korean police told CNN that arrest warrants and Interpol red notices have been issued for other ringleaders, and they are tracking the suspects’ whereabouts with Cambodian authorities.
Many scammers have reported being subject to horrific violence in Southeast Asia’s compounds. Dex said the Korean‑run section had “almost no violence,” and he was never beaten. But supervisors warned that underperformers who fell into company debt were “sold” to Chinese groups, where beatings and electric shocks were used. When he watched one such worker quietly disappear, he swore he would never end up like that.
Park Chan‑dae, a lawmaker who helped rescue 16 South Koreans from Cambodian scam sites in August and September, said some captives did report brutal treatment.
“They were beaten, faced sexual assault threats and were even subjected to medical exams related to possible organ trafficking,” he told CNN.
By Dex’s third month in the compound, reality hit. A target sent the scammers roughly $34,000 of their money. As cheers erupted among the cramped group, the weight of what he had done drowned out the noise.
Seeking to evade police, the syndicate later moved to a remote area near the border with Vietnam. During one of the rare outings allowed every two weeks, Dex took his chance and escaped. He took a taxi straight to Phnom Penh with nothing but his phone and enough cash for the ride and hid overnight in a small inn. He went to the South Korean Embassy the next morning and began the process of repatriation.
Not every captive was so lucky. Last July, Park Min‑ho told his family he was heading to a job fair, according to multiple local reports, which his university later confirmed to CNN.
Weeks later, the 22-year-old’s body was found inside a car in Kampot province, about 90 miles southwest of Phnom Penh, the Cambodian government said in October. The building where he stayed was identified as a scam compound, with officials saying he died of “a heart attack caused by severe torture,” marked by bruises and injuries across his body.
Authorities have charged three Chinese men and two others in connection with his death. Two accomplices remain at large, according to the Cambodian government.
CNN has reached out to the Cambodian Ministry of Interior for comment.
The issue has forced an uncomfortable reckoning at home. By October, South Korea had already repatriated more than 60 citizens detained in Cambodia and banned travel to areas notorious as scam zones.
While Hoon worked to recover what he had lost, Dex, now back in South Korea, was still receiving Telegram threats from the syndicate he had escaped. Then he saw a news report about the same trading platform his organization had used to defraud victims. At the bottom of the story, someone left a comment with their contact details asking anyone with information to come forward.
He hesitated, then called. The woman who answered was Clay, a victim who had lost more than $138,000 to the scheme. Her name has also been changed.
Clay, who had been tracking the case, urged Dex to speak with police. At first, he resisted, afraid he’d be treated as a criminal. But in the end, he turned over photos, spreadsheets and chat logs that helped police merge separate complaints into a larger investigation.
Officers found more than a hundred linked complaints totaling about 12 billion South Korean won ($8.1 million) in losses.
The decision brought months of questioning and sleepless nights but, eventually, progress. “When they started arresting members, the threats stopped,” Dex said.
Clay has since brought together a group of defrauded Koreans, including Hoon, who are now pressing authorities to act on what she calls a “global scam crisis.” The members include a mother of two who lost $1 million; a divorced man who lost more than $100,000; and a woman who lost a family member to suicide after they fell victim to a Cambodia-based scam.
Victims like Clay say they eventually realized their losses weren’t isolated mishaps but part of a larger operation. When they compared chat logs and voice recordings, they realized that the same Korean man – alleged ringleader Kang – had been appearing under different names across multiple fake trading platforms, serving as the scam’s deepfake broadcast investment expert. Dex helped verify accounts for Clay.
Kang was arrested by Cambodian police in February 2025, and has been repatriated to South Korea, along with his wife.
They were among more than 70 South Koreans detained in Cambodia and repatriated on Friday over alleged involvement in the network, a return the presidential office described as unprecedented in scale. The suspects defrauded more than 860 South Koreans of about $33 million, the president’s spokesperson said in a news conference.
South Korean court records allege that Kang was subject to an Interpol red notice in September 2024, and used deepfake images to impersonate investment experts, inducing victims to transfer money under the guise of investment advice. Ahn Young‑ji, Kang’s wife, was also subject to a red notice and is listed as an alleged call center operative, using multiple aliases to befriend victims and lure them into transferring money.
“To evade South Korean authorities, the suspects altered their appearances through plastic surgery while in hiding,” the president’s spokesperson told reporters.
Victims say they are now pushing for the extradition of the remaining ringleaders – but accountability also means following the money.
While investigators have not publicly identified the final destination of the funds, victims like Clay say they are pressing authorities to determine where the money ultimately went.
Today, Dex works long shifts at a car-seat factory. The fear has eased, but his parents still believe he was only traveling in Cambodia. He intends to keep it that way.
