Hundreds of Bangladeshis have been rescued from Cambodia’s infamous scam centres in recent weeks. Returnees described a similar pattern of being lured with promises of well-paid jobs, only to be issued visas that did not match the work they had been promised. By the time they reached Cambodia and their passports and documents were taken away, many realised they were being forced to scam unsuspecting elderly people.

Interviews with returnees reveal a trafficking network that recruits Bangladeshis with false job offers, sends them abroad through local brokers and agencies, and delivers them to heavily guarded compounds in Cambodia. Their testimonies suggest they were confined to scam centres in the Bokor Mountains or compounds in Sihanoukville that have already been mapped and identified by Amnesty International. Their accounts also reveal a strikingly similar pattern.

For 26-year-old Tofail Ahmed, leaving home was supposed to mark the beginning of a better life.

The Sirajganj native worked as a representative for a pharmaceutical company while also selling insurance policies.

“But the income was simply not enough,” Tofail said.

In 2025, he asked a close friend who had returned from China to help him find work in Saudi Arabia or Malaysia.

“He was a very close friend. We are in fact related by blood,” Tofail said.

Instead, the friend suggested a computer operator’s job in Cambodia, saying it could be arranged much faster than employment in Saudi Arabia.

Their first meeting with the broker took place at a tea stall across the highway from Dhaka’s Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in April 2025.

The broker scanned Tofail’s passport and other documents before telling him he would get back to him. A few weeks later, they discussed payment.

The broker demanded Tk 7 lakh for a job that, he said, would pay Tk 80,000 a month.

Tofail paid Tk 1 lakh directly to the broker and the remaining amount to Pushpita Overseas, a manpower agency in Fakirapool.

“I went to their office. It was an agency that regularly sent people abroad,” he said.

A few weeks later, the broker delivered his Cambodian visa.

But there was an unexpected problem.

The visa identified him as a construction worker with North Asian Construction Company.

“I asked why construction worker. Wasn’t I supposed to go as a computer operator?”

According to Tofail, the broker dismissed his concerns, saying the designation was temporary and would be changed after he proved himself.

On June 30, 2025, Tofail began his journey.

At the airline check-in counter, staff initially refused to issue his boarding pass because his itinerary involved two airlines and a transit stop in Thailand.

“Apparently I needed a visa for Thailand, the country of transit.”

He immediately called the broker.

The broker instructed him to stand beside a specific pillar at the airport and send him a photograph through WhatsApp.

“Within about five minutes, a man came and took me back to the check-in counter again. This time, they issued a boarding pass within 10 minutes.”

He then cleared immigration without difficulty.

“The officer asked my purpose of visit. I said it was for construction work as the visa stated, and the officer commended me saying ‘that’s good work’, and waved me through.”

Before boarding, another contact arranged by the broker handed him $2,000 (about Tk 2,44,000) in cash.

“So I waited there before heading towards the boarding gates. And soon enough, another person came round to hand over the money.”

His flight, with a two-hour transit in Bangkok, was otherwise uneventful. When he landed in the capital, Phnom Penh, another man was waiting to receive him.

“He was probably an employee of the hotel or the broker’s agent, I don’t know.”

Tofail said the man was Bangladeshi.

“He spoke Bengali.”

The man took him to a hotel, where he stayed for two days.

“They arranged room and board for two days, and I did not have any problems.”

Then came what he believed would be his job interview.

Instead, he was driven for more than three hours to a remote, heavily guarded compound.

“It was quite remote near the mountains and there was nothing much else around it.”

At the entrance, his escort repeatedly exchanged WhatsApp messages and photographs with people inside before the gates finally opened.

Once inside, Tofail’s passport, other documents and the $2,000 were taken away.

Only after he reached the fourth floor did he learn what his real job would be.

“They explained that I would get personal details from my targets. I said I would not do it.”

The work involved pretending to be a woman online and scamming people.

Tofail immediately called his broker in Bangladesh.

Instead of helping him leave, he said, the broker advised him to stay and continue working until another opportunity became available.

According to Tofail, the people running the compound appeared to be Chinese nationals.

“They said I had been sold for $2,000. And now they simply would not let me go.”

Unable to leave, he eventually gave in.

“I worked for a month and 27 days for them.”

He said he received $476 (about Tk 58,100) for one month’s work but was never paid for the following month.

His room on the second floor housed six to eight Bangladeshis.

“The rooms were nice. Clean and well furnished. There was central air conditioning and the food was acceptable. That is when they didn’t serve the Chinese stuff.”

Some days they were served rice and fish. On others, the meals consisted of pork, ham and noodles, which he refused to eat.

Tofail said the compounds functioned like self-contained cities.

“There are grocery stores and shops where you can buy things. And several companies share a single building.”

Whenever he refused to work or repeatedly asked to leave, he said, he was punished.

“They would take me to a solitary room where I would be beaten with hockey sticks and given electric shock.”

He said workers who failed to meet their targets also faced torture.

Eventually, Tofail persuaded his family to send more money. He paid the managers, secured his release and left the compound.

Back in touch with the manpower agency in Bangladesh, he said he found little sympathy.

“My broker gave me an earful and started cursing at me. I cursed back. I had no job then and he would not help me either.”

To survive, Tofail later found another job in Cambodia, which he declined to disclose.

After saving enough money for his ticket, he returned to Bangladesh on June 14 this year.

“I finally managed to reach Dhaka. It was a terrible hellish ordeal.”

Another victim, the same pattern

When Talat Mahmud arrived in Cambodia, he too believed he was travelling for a legitimate job.

The Manikganj resident had paid Tk 5 lakh after being promised decent employment. Instead, he found himself trapped in another cyber scam compound.

Like Tofail, Talat said he was shocked to discover that the job he had paid for did not exist.

“My passport and phone had been taken away, and the operators demanded money for my release. They told me I had been bought for $3,000 (about Tk 3,66,000),” he told The Daily Star.

Talat travelled to Cambodia in November last year through a local contact after paying Tk 5 lakh.

As there was no direct flight, he travelled via China, spending around four hours in transit before arriving in Cambodia the same day.

Two Bangladeshis received him at the airport, one of them a driver. They took him to a hotel, where he stayed for two days. On the third day, they drove him about 120 kilometres from the city where he had landed and handed him over to a Chinese-run company near the Cambodian border.

There, his typing speed and English proficiency were tested before he was asked whether he wanted to work or leave.

When he contacted his Bangladeshi agent, the response was familiar.

The agent advised him to stay, saying a better job would be arranged later. Talat soon realised that would never happen.

He said the food was poor and he had to work throughout the night.

As he repeatedly demanded to leave, the agent gradually stopped responding to his calls and messages.

Around the same time, the Chinese operators called him for another interview.

Talat said he passed the first round but refused to attend the second after other Bangladeshis warned him he might be sold to another company for a higher price.

Soon afterwards, his phone was taken away and returned for only 10 minutes at a time.

When he refused to continue working, he alleged that he was tortured with electric shocks.

He also said he was given dry noodles, sometimes only once a day, and was occasionally denied water.

“I became weak… did not even have the strength to speak properly,” he said.

Talat’s experience closely mirrors several other testimonies and police case documents reviewed by The Daily Star, all pointing to a similar trafficking pattern.

Victims said they were promised jobs as computer operators, data-entry workers, factory employees or customer service staff.

Most paid several lakh Taka before leaving Bangladesh. Many travelled on visas or other documents that did not match the jobs they had been promised.

After arriving in Cambodia, they were received by Bangladeshi handlers, kept briefly in hotels and then taken to heavily guarded compounds, where they were sold to cyber scam operators.

For many, the financial demands did not end there.

Several victims said they or their families had to send more money to secure their release, recover their passports or return home.

The route to Cambodia

The scale of the trafficking became clearer this week when 109 Bangladeshis rescued from different cyber scam compounds in Cambodia returned home on July 1 on a Thai Airways flight.

With them, a total of 583 Bangladeshis have been repatriated from Cambodia since June, according to the BRAC Migration Programme. Data from the Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training (BMET), cited by BRAC, shows that 15,921 Bangladeshis travelled to Cambodia for work over the past one and a half years.

Interviews with returnees suggest many followed almost identical routes.

One returnee from Lakshmipur told BRAC that a recruiting agency and broker network promised him a computer operator’s job in Cambodia for Tk 5.3 lakh.

He received BMET clearance. But after arriving in Cambodia, he discovered he had only a one-month visit visa. Bangladeshi brokers received him at the airport before selling him to a cyber scam compound that had a separate torture room, similar to those described by Tofail and Talat.

At least five police case documents reviewed by The Daily Star describe nearly identical experiences. Victims said they were promised legitimate jobs, paid large sums to brokers, travelled abroad on documents that often did not match the promised employment, and were eventually delivered to scam compounds.

Several also said they or their families had to arrange additional money to recover their passports and return home.

Inside the fraud machine

If Tofail’s and Talat’s stories explain how Bangladeshis are trafficked to Cambodia, Al Amin’s account sheds light on what awaits them inside the compounds.

The Faridpur resident said he travelled to Cambodia after being promised a data-entry job on an employment visa. But after arriving, he discovered he had only a tourist visa.

After staying at temporary accommodation for two to three days, he and others were taken to a scam compound.

“There, we were sold for $1,500 (about Tk 1,83,000) each,” he said.

According to Al Amin, the operation mainly targeted elderly and retired Americans through fake online identities. Workers were assigned female names and photographs before being put in front of computers.

“My job was only to collect phone numbers using a female name and photo,” he said.

He described a structured operation in which different teams handled different stages of the scam.

One team collected phone numbers. Another built relationships with targets. A third gathered personal information, including addresses and banking details. The information was then passed to hackers who attempted to empty the victims’ bank accounts.

“One person would collect the number, another would talk, another would collect details, and finally it would go to the hacker,” he said.

He also alleged that women were used to gain victims’ trust.

When targets requested video calls, women joined the conversations, built relationships and tried to obtain more personal and financial information, he said.

When Al Amin refused to continue working, he said the operators told him he had been bought for one year and could not leave until they recovered the money they had spent on him.

The compound was secured by multiple security gates. Food, accommodation and shops were all inside, leaving workers with no opportunity to leave.

The promised eight-hour workday soon turned into shifts of 12 to 16 hours.

Workers lived in multi-storey buildings divided into small rooms with attached washrooms, he said.

He added that Pakistanis, South Indians, Tamils, Nepalis, Bhutanese and people from several other countries were also working there.

To regain his freedom, Al Amin said he first had to repay the $1,500 that the company claimed it had spent to buy him.

Even then, he alleged, the agent withheld the group’s passports and demanded another $500 (about Tk 61,000) from each worker before releasing them.

“Seven Bangladeshis were trapped in the same situation,” he said.

They also had to buy their own tickets home.

Women caught in the same network

Maimuna Akter Mili alleged that she borrowed money to secure a job in Cambodia that promised a monthly salary of Tk 80,000.

She said a Bangladeshi contact received her on arrival and handed her over to a Chinese-run company, where her passport and mobile phone were taken away and she was forced to work.

She also alleged that many Bangladeshi women remain trapped in Cambodia after being lured by similar job offers.

“Cyber slavery”

Shariful Hasan, associate director of the BRAC Migration Programme and Youth Platform, described the situation as “cyber slavery”.

“This is not just trafficking. This is cyber scam, or cyber slavery,” he told The Daily Star.

He said the victims of trafficking were being forced to make others victims through online scams.

Shariful questioned how thousands of Bangladeshis had travelled to Cambodia for work despite repeated warnings.

“When someone goes abroad with BMET clearance and a smart card, he believes he is going through the official process. But instead of getting a job, he is being sold,” he said.

He called for investigations into the role of brokers, recruiting agencies, trafficking networks and any officials involved in approving such migration.

Few cases despite hundreds returning

Mostafizur Rahman, additional superintendent of the Criminal Investigation Department’s Trafficking in Human Beings Unit, said many Bangladeshis had recently returned from Cambodia, but comparatively few had filed cases.

“People are returning, but the number of cases is very low compared with that,” he told The Daily Star.

He said many Bangladeshis had been able to return after Cambodian authorities allowed overstaying foreigners to leave without paying fines.

According to information from the Bangladesh embassy, around 4,000 to 4,500 Bangladeshis were overstaying in Cambodia, and many received travel passes to facilitate their return.

Mostafizur said the CID had already arrested several suspects and investigations into trafficking allegations were continuing.

He added that many returnees were reluctant to pursue legal action, while others were trying to recover their money through negotiations with brokers.

According to him, traffickers had also adapted their methods.

After Bangladesh tightened checks on travel to Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, some recruiters allegedly began using fake BMET cards or sending workers to Thailand as tourists before moving them to Cambodia.

“When we made the process stricter, they shifted to alternative routes,” he said.

He said greater public awareness was essential to prevent more Bangladeshis from falling victim to fraudulent overseas job offers.

State Minister for Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment Nurul Haque Noor said the ministry had tightened scrutiny of visas for people travelling to countries such as Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos for work.

The ministry had also asked law enforcement agencies to take action against those involved in visa fraud and overseas job scams, he told The Daily Star.

“The ministry is also reviewing its work visa attestation policy for countries such as Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos,” Noor added.

In association with ANN