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Our reporters went into a notorious refuge for scammers and fraudsters, and emerged with a how-to guide.
By Selam Gebrekidan and Joy Dong
Selam Gebrekidan and Joy Dong spent months investigating scammers and money launderers. And yet they still get spam calls and texts.
March 23, 2025, 12:01 a.m. ET
We live in a scammer’s world.
We get texts from unknown numbers with an odd tone of familiarity. We have been promised breathtaking profits in ads on social media. We have encountered characters on dating apps who seemed too good to be true.
It’s not just us, of course. Most people have heard stories or know someone — a relative, colleague, neighbor — who fell for a ruse and lost money, perhaps even their life savings.
But as our phones blew up with spam calls, we asked a different question. The scammers make billions of dollars every year. How do they turn this illicit cash into seemingly legitimate income? In other words, how do they wash it clean?
So we followed the money.
Our search took us from Hong Kong, where we are both based, to Cambodia. In the coastal city of Sihanoukville, we witnessed the enduring and notorious carnival of scams, operated from barbed-wire compounds or the upper floors of unfinished buildings. We met with scammers and their launderers at Chinese restaurants that line the beach.
It took us a while to persuade insiders to speak to us but, in the end, about a half-dozen of them led us into their labyrinthine world. They showed us channels on the social media app Telegram where they conduct their trade. They taught us their jargon.
