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10-04-2026
PHNOM PENH: Wandering down the unlit corridors of a six-storey building behind the Royal Hill casino, each door opens onto a different world.
In one there is a perfect replica of a Vietnamese bank. In another, you’re in an Australian police station. A Chinese police officer’s shirt hangs in one corner.
Motivational messages have been painted on the walls. “Money Coming From Everywhere”, read the Chinese characters on one sign. Discarded fake hundred dollar bills are lying all over the floor.
This was a massive scam compound, just inside Cambodia in a border town called O Smach. Thousands of people from different countries worked here, under a harsh regime which strictly regimented their lives, defrauding thousands of others across the world of their savings.
In December Royal Hill was bombed by the Thai air force during the brief border war between the two countries, the Thais say Cambodian drones were being launched from the casino. The workers fled, leaving behind uneaten bowls of noodles, half-drunk cans of coke and a pungent smell.
Today, Royal Hill is empty, aside from the Thai soldiers occupying it. The windows have been shattered by the bombardment, and in places gaping holes have been blown through the walls and roof, coating everything with dust.
The Thai military brought us there because they said they wanted the world to see just how big the scam industry had become in Cambodia. We need international help in shutting this scourge down, they told us; but it also serves as a secondary justification for the Thai air attacks on Cambodian targets in December.
The Cambodian government has protested against the Thai occupation of its territory but the Thais argue that under their ceasefire both sides have agreed to keep their forces where they were when the fighting stopped.
What is remarkable about Royal Hill is not just its size, but the fact that almost nothing was known about it until the Thais took control of it.
The O Smach Casino, a complex across the road, has featured in news reports about fleeing scam workers complaining of abuses.
Its owner, Ly Yong Phat, is one of Cambodia’s most famous tycoons, known for his close relationship with the ruling Hun clan, headed by former Prime Minister Hun Sen. Ly Yong Phat has been sanctioned by the US and other countries for his alleged role in human trafficking and online fraud but Royal Hill’s owner Lim Heng keeps a much lower profile. He has never featured on international sanctions lists, although like Ly Yong Phat he has also been awarded the prestigious title of Neak Oknha by Hun Sen for which he would have been required to donate at least $500,000 (£300,000) making him part of a Cambodian elite of just a few hundred.
The only somewhat unusual thing that is known about him is his habit of paying respect to the cremation site of the notorious Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, which lies close to another of his casinos on the northern border with Thailand.
Most of Cambodia’s tycoons got rich by acquiring huge parcels of land in the years after the end of the Cambodian civil war in 1991 through their ties to the ruling family.
At first they made money from illegal logging and plantations, later benefitting from a speculative property boom in the cities fueled by Chinese investors but in border regions like O Smach casinos were the most profitable business, taking advantage of gambling bans in neighboring countries like Thailand and China. The Cambodian government has issued around 200 casino licences over the past three decades.
These attracted Chinese crime syndicates, who also ran lucrative online gambling businesses from the casinos but in 2019, under pressure from China, Hun Sen banned online gambling. (BBC)
