Behind the yachts and private jets of the $1.5 billion Mauerberger network, a vast criminal enterprise traffics foreign nationals into Cambodian scam centers to steal billions from US victims.
In our series so far on the $1.5 billion Chinese-Cambodian money network, we’ve focused on how the criminals, fronted by South African Benjamin Mauerberger, took dirty cash and bought yachts, private planes and $20 million apartments in New York – all under the cover of former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.
Now we’re going deep inside Cambodia, one of the most corrupt countries on earth, to show how this network generates billions of dollars from crime to fund the extravagant lifestyles of Mauerberger & co. Behind the yachts and the planes and paid-for politicians, there are real victims. In this case, it’s the foreign nationals trafficked into Cambodia’s notorious scam industry, and the people around the world they are forced to target at-scale.
The Cambodian landscape is dotted with fortified compounds – run mostly by Chinese gangsters, with heavy protection from members of the ruling elite and the formal institutions they control – where people from more than 70 countries (according to the U.S. Department of State) are compelled to scam victims from an even wider range of nations. These “pig-butchering scams” cost Americans at least $10 billion annually, the U.S. Treasury estimates – likely the leading form of financial crime hitting the United States today. In this installment, we’re joined by a guest co-author (transnational crime expert and Harvard Fellow, Jacob Sims) who will help us show how this criminalized national ecosystem connects back to the Mauerberger network.
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Tom and Bradley
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