In January, a 38-year-old Chinese-born entrepreneur named Chenji was arrested in Cambodia and extradited to China.

He was one of the richest people in Cambodia and one of the best connected.

He was an elite businessman who also served as a government advisor.

A few months before this arrest, it was the U.S. government who went after Chen. They designated his holding company,

a transnational criminal organization, and they charged him with fraud and money laundering.

They also seized $15 billion worth of crypto. Where did all that crypto come from?

Chenji, in addition to running a real estate development firm and other businesses,

allegedly ran a massive online scamming operation that specialized in what the Chinese

call pig butchering.

That means fattening up the scam victims for months or years.

And then, when the time is right, the slaughter.

U.S. prosecutors say that cybercrime in Cambodia generates as much as $19 billion a year,

which would account for roughly half of the Cambodian GDP.

The U.S. government says that scammers in Southeast Asia stole $10 billion from Americans in

24 alone.

There were other victims, too.

After Chen was arrested in Cambodia, thousands of his workers fled the country.

They had reportedly been trafficked to Cambodia, and they were being held against their

will at scam

compounds. Today, on Freakonomics Radio, is it fair to call scamming an industry?

It is absolutely an industry, a very complex, always evolving, very competitive industry.

We will hear how the industry works from getting hold of your data.

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