In an innovative investigation, the New York Times has retired the curtain of one of the most elusive criminal companies in the world: money laundering. Titled “The scam manual: how to wash money and escape it”, the report, published today, on March 23, 2025, exposes the intrarata networks that transform illegal gains into seemingly legitimate health. Often just below the noses. As the Times reveals, this gloomy ecosystem thrives in places like Cambodia, where scammers and their financial facilitators operate with an alarming impunity.
The New York Times investigation, headed by reporters Selam Lugeridan and Joy Dong, discovers a “hydration” system so efficient that it has mocked the efforts of the Ministry of Public Security of the FBI, Interpol and China. “Every few less, the fireworks illuminate the night sky in Cambodia, undertaken by scammers to greet their biggest scams,” writes the Times, painting a vivid image of a criminal underworld who celebrates with audacity. These are not small thieves, but sophisticated operators who take advantage of victims who do not submit to victims worldwide, divert “tens of billions of dollars every year” through romantic scams, false cryptocurrencies and others.
A step -by -step play book for washing spoils
The New York Times articulated a chilling reality: scammers trust a meticulously elaborated plays to “scrub” their profits from criminal origins. The process begins with a “pairing”, a trust intermediary that connects the scammers with a global network or “money mules.” These mules, or involuntary individuals or Shell companies, transport funds through bank accounts or cryptocurrency wallets at lightning speed. “A good pairing has a worldwide network of people … that can move money in a matter of hours,” explains the Times, citing a cache of documents described as a “money death manual.”
For example, imagine that a scammer travels $ 40,000 from a victim in the United States. The New York Times was even more nurtured in his article that the pairing takes a cut, typical “15 percent of the Prodetten”, before deploying mules to fragment and redirect the funds. From there, money could bounce through multiple countries, or land in centers such as Phnom Penh or Sihanoukville, Cambodia – Cambodia The Times is identified as “global cleaning houses for money washing machines.” This rapid movement, often wrapped in cryptocurrency transactions, makes the tracking of the funds an almost impossible task for the application of the law.
Cambodia: The epicenter of illicit finance
Times research focuses on Cambodia as a nervous center for this illicit economy. In Sihanoukville, coastal restaurants are full of “money washing machines and other criminals that do business on spicy Chinese food”, while fortified compounds and calls from the house in an unfinished height call operations. The New York Times forced the documents and interviewed almost a half -box carrier, revealing how these centers operate with impunity, even when international agencies rush to dismantle them.
A name stands out: Huione, a Cambodian company linked to large -scale criminal companies. According to the Times, analysis companies such as elliptical and chain chain have linked Huione customers to a Myanmar group that exploit human trafficking victims, with cryptocurrency operations that amount to “$ 26.8 billion.” Impunity, ”reports the Times, pointing out that no government has still imposed sanctions on the group.
Global consequences and lack of action
The scale of this problem is internship. The New York Times estimates that the victims lose “tens of billions of dollars every year”, a figure resonated by the Center for Complaints for FBI Internet Crimes (IC3)which reported $ 12.5 billion in losses of online scams only in 2023. However, as the Times underline, the washing networks remain resistant, appearing in another place every time the authorities find. “The money repair system is so hydra that when governments hit it in one place, it appears in another,” articles are a condemnatory accusation of global application efforts.
This is not just a Cambodian problem. TO Washington Post report As of December 2024, he highlighted how scammers exploit emotional vulnerabilities to extract funds, a tactic that is directly feeding on the washing pipes exposed by the times. Meanwhile, the United States Department of Justice Actions against “Money Mules” have increased, prosecuting people who without knowing it, or knowing, said these schemes, thought that such efforts barely abolish the broader network.
Why persists: a broken system
The New York Times articulated an alerting truth: the persistence of these operations comes from their efficiency and the fragmented response of the world. Banks emit warnings, telecommunications block numbers, but scammers adapt. The Times points to an “online bazaar” where criminals openly hire washing machines, an elliptical market links billions in illicit cryptography operations. “The industry is so grandmother that it is difficult to separate the legitimate transactions from the illegal,” says the article, exposing a regulatory blind spot that criminals exploit.
Experts agree. “The global financial system is plagued with gaps that sophisticated criminals navigate easily,” said John Cassara, a former Treasury of the United States Treasury and author of the money laundering based on trade, in an interview with East Herald. Cassara’s work is aligned with the findings of the New York Times, emphasizing how laundering and trade -based cryptocurrencies have supercharged these schemes.
A call for responsibility
New York Times research is more than an exhibition: it is a Clarion call. As governments, the burden falls on financial institutions and technological platforms to interrupt these networks. He Financial Action Working Group (FATF)An international organism that combines money laundering, has urged a stricter supervision of cryptocurrency exchanges, a recommendation that resonates with the revelations of the Times. However, without coordinated actions, fireworks in Cambodia will continue to explode, greeting a criminal company that does not show signs of deceleration.
For now, the New York Times has given us a rare vision of the “scam manual”, a plan to launder money and go out with his. The question remains: the world will finally rewrite the end?