O’SMACH, Cambodia - A notebook lies open on a table littered with keyboards and industrial USB hub ports with charging cables left plugged in. One entry in English reads: “I’m single and I’ve been busy with work in recent years. So I rarely make new friends. I’m from Singapore. From which country are you from?”

Another handwritten entry below continues “in Singapore, a job like yours generally earns 1,500 to 2,000 SGD per month. How much do you earn in a month in your country?”

These entries appear to be a chat guide which a cyberscammer could use with an unsuspecting victim. Hundreds of such notebooks are found inside rooms which look like open office workspaces in a compound located in O’Smach town in Cambodia, bordering Thailand.

The massive compound, occupying 80 hectares or up to 125 football fields, is infamous for its transnational cyberscam activities.

On April 7, The Straits Times was among 15 news outlets taken on a tour of the compound, whose operations were crippled by Thailand’s military in December 2025 during the border clashes with Cambodia.

The Thai military and foreign ministry had organised at least three media tours to the area, as they wanted to show the industrial scale of the organised crime operations in Cambodia.

Thailand had accused Cambodia of using the vast compound, about 400m from the border in Thai’s Surin province to store military weapons, launch grenade attacks into Thai soil and position snipers to target Thailand. After attacking the compound which included two casinos, Thailand discovered that the facilities were used as scam centres after its military occupied the location.