Damnak Chang-Ear district, Kep province, Cambodia — A woman was on her way to pick mushrooms with her three children when they found the body of a man dumped in a field in An Tua village in Kep’s Pong Teuk commune.

Heng Chea, 55, was one of the many residents who soon arrived at the scene on the morning of May 17.

Many military police and police officers surrounded a taped-up area while the body lay face-down in a T-shirt and underwear. He appeared to have been thrown at the roots of trees, and looked to be in his late 30s.

“They told us that [the family] was looking for mushrooms in trees and discovered the man. At first they believed that he was sleeping or resting. They were frightened and ran in fear.”

He saw multiple serious wounds and bruises on the body — he believed they were scars from a brutal assault, including gunshot wounds and a broken face.

“In our area, we’ve never experienced a thing like this,” Heng Chea said. “His stomach was cut through to his back.”

The dead man’s wife arrived at the scene and cried until she was unconscious, he said.

He heard from the police that military police had been searching for him for one night and two days after having heard a gunshot at the “White Horse” area, referring to a statue on one of Kep’s main roundabouts.

He was told that military police had driven through the night searching.

“Before we only heard this in other provinces, and now it has come to our province,” he said.

“From my point of view, it has something to do with online.”

The English word “online” is used in Khmer to refer to all kinds of remote, online work — but these days, especially to the massive scam industry that took root in the country. Compounds flourished across many of Cambodia’s provinces, but a police crackdown against them ramped up in January. They were emptied of hundreds of thousands of foreign workers, many of them scammed themselves into believing they were coming for a legitimate job and forced to work amid violence.

Kep, the country’s smallest province, a largely tourism- and fishing-oriented coastal area, was not part of the scam boom. But as scam operations scattered, some arrived there.

Pong Teuk commune chief Ly Hort said that even within Kep, his commune was a quiet area.

“The body was dumped in the forest. If [the family] was not collecting mushrooms, the body would not have been discovered because it was in the forest and it is remote. Not many people go on that road. It’s mostly only used for cow carts,” Ly Hort said.

Pong Teuk had no large apartments or buildings to be used for online scams, and it was the first time such an incident had occurred, he said. Ly Hort has been commune chief since 1979.

“In our commune, we haven’t seen any foreigners come to rent houses. … We have only two Chinese people who work in a factory and they have proper documents,” he said.

“Our commune has to keep an eye on foreigners at the moment, and we will not allow [online scams] to happen in our area.”

The murder case is being handled at the provincial level.

Bun Yeong, Kep’s deputy governor and spokesperson, said a number of suspects had been identified, and some were known to have already fled overseas.

“We’re tracing others’ involvement,” Bun Yeong said. Kep police and military police were both on the case. “The case is still under investigation. We don’t yet know the motive behind it.”

Any potential link between the murder and the scam industry has not been revealed.

Nonetheless, it happened at a time when the previously spared province began to find budding scam operations.

“At two locations, [suspects] had just started to organize and build up their network equipment to run their operation,” said Bun Yeong.

Authorities had found plans for “communicating, answering and appeasing” — possibly referring to scam scripts — but computers had not yet been hooked up to the networking equipment.

“So it means there have not been any victims yet.”

At the two locations, 24 people were arrested: two Cambodians and 14 foreign nationals at the first, and eight foreign nationals at the second.

Authorities had issued fines against the property owners of $1,000 per improperly documented person.

Authorities had checked up on 700 foreigners of 18 nationalities and found most of them with valid passports and visas, he added.

Online, Kep authorities and government media have posted some further details on the two actions:

• On April 7, Kep police arrested two Cambodians and 14 Chinese nationals suspected of committing technology-based fraud, and confiscated 21 laptops and 25 phones. A Kep court statement said the 16 had been detained in the Kampot prison. The alleged crime site was in O’Krasar village, O’Krasar commune, Kep city.
• On June 1, Kep police raided an online scam operation at a rented house in Thmey village, Prey Thom commune, Kep city. Authorities arrested seven Chinese and one Myanmar national, and seized five computers, three phones and other equipment.

Kuoy Chengkong, the chief of O’Krasar commune, the site of the first incident, said he had not expected scams to reach his area.

“We were surprised. … But we noticed that they never came out and that drew our attention. It’s correct that during the massive flight [of scammers] from the raids in other provinces, they snuck in to do online scams here.”

Kep governor Som Piseth issued a video on April 19 calling on officers to uncover online scam operations.

“If I go track it down and find out it is fact and there is evidence and witnesses, I will give you a reward. … It is my personal reward,” he said in the video.

Suspicious signs included houses completely locked up except for vans bringing people in and out at night, and occupants never leaving.

“Please check it carefully. It is not difficult, brothers and sisters,” he said, asking authorities on islands off the coast to also keep watch. “I’m assigning you 150 people as my ‘eyes of the pineapple,’” he added, a term that was also used in Khmer Rouge surveillance slogans.

“We cannot let this happen in our Kep province because we have been very clean — white — since a very long time ago. And now the nests from other places have scattered into small groups and … have flown out here to land and ruin our reputation. I am not satisfied with this.”

This article is published as Creative Commons.