The Scammer’s Manual: How to Launder Money and Get Away With It

Picture: The Huione Pay headquarters in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Some of the company’s affiliates have created the architecture needed to launder money | Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

In an article by The New York Times, Selam Gebrekidan, Joy Dong, Chang W. Lee, and Weiyi Cai expose Cambodia’s role in large-scale online scams and money laundering, particularly through platforms like Huione, which allegedly facilitates financial crimes for criminal networks—including human trafficking groups in Myanmar. It describes how scammers in Cambodia launder money (sometimes using cryptocurrency) and celebrate fraudulent successes, leaving victims devastated.

Every few weeks, fireworks light up the night sky in Cambodia, set off by scammers to salute their biggest swindles.

By the time the shells pop and crackle, somebody’s life savings are probably gone. Maybe the victim fell for an online romance scam or bought into a fake cryptocurrency exchange. Whatever the scheme, the money has vanished, sucked into a complex money-laundering network that moves billions of dollars at a dizzying speed.

The FBI, China’s ministry of Public Security, Interpol and others have tried to combat scammers, who often lurk on social media and dating apps, luring people into bogus financial schemes or other ruses. Telecom companies have blocked numbers. Banks have issued repeated warnings.

Yet the industry persists because its money laundering operation is so efficient. Unsuspecting victims worldwide lose tens of billions of dollars each year, money that must be scrubbed of its criminal origins and deposited into the legitimate economy. The money laundering system is so hydra-headed that when governments strike it in one place, it pops up in another.