Yesterday, joint law enforcement officers moved in to arrest Ouk Sophol, a deputy police chief in Banteay Meanchey province, over his alleged ties to online scam syndicates. According to local media, the senior officer had quietly been leasing two of his own properties in Poipet to scam operators. Between the two buildings—one five stories high, the other two—there were a massive 231 rooms and five large halls packed into the compound.
The arrest comes shortly after police raided the complex and rounded up more than 200 scam workers on-site. Poipet’s border strip is a chaotic maze of street stalls, crowded rentals, and smoke-belching motorbikes zipping through the night, making it easy for things to hide in plain sight. But few suspected that a high-ranking police official was the landlord quietly profiting off hundreds of scam operations running day and night inside those walls.
It’s been the main topic of conversation around town over the past couple of days. Locals point out that with hundreds of people filing in and out of the buildings daily, the operation was impossible to miss—and who knows how long it would have carried on if the joint task force hadn't finally stepped in. With the compound busted and the deputy chief in custody, a lucrative corner of Poipet’s scam protection network has finally been exposed.
