Matt Walsh frames the $16 billion in 2024 scam losses as a national security crisis driven by Cambodian and Chinese syndicates, detailing toll fraud, QR code malware, and "pig butchering" romance scams that devastated victims like Erica Damask. He argues these operations, fueled by abuse in foreign compounds, require military intervention similar to Thailand's 2023 airstrikes, asserting that the U.S. must strike these facilities to stop an epidemic stealing billions from vulnerable Americans. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Survival Tax and Credit Card Scams00:15:01
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You know, I like to think that I'm a relatively smart and savvy guy, although some might disagree.
Smart enough to sniff out a scam pretty quickly anyway.
And yet, just recently, I almost.
Fell for one.
It was a scam text message, one of the seemingly dozens that I get every week now.
And you probably received a similar message.
It was one of those fake toll notifications where you're told that you owe money because you passed a toll booth without paying.
And the reason that it almost worked on me and kind of tripped me up is that I had recently done exactly that when I was out of state.
I came up on the toll, didn't have an easy pass, didn't have any cash on me.
So I just blew through it like an irresponsible citizen.
And I knew I'd get a ticket and figured I'd just pay it whenever it comes in.
It just so happens that a few days after my dastardly toll dodging crime, I got this text message.
So, my first reaction was to take it at face value.
The text said I had an unpaid toll.
I did, in fact, have an unpaid toll.
So, I was just about to click the link, but then I thought better of it.
I realized that they probably wouldn't send a text to get me to pay a toll.
And also, the wording of the text was weirdly aggressive, threatening that my license might be imminently suspended if I don't pay right away, which, of course, is not true.
So, on second thought, it seemed suspicious.
And then on third thought, I realized that it was very obviously a scam and I was an idiot for even considering clicking on the link.
So I deleted the text and moved on, slightly embarrassed.
Still haven't gotten the ticket for the toll, by the way.
But this put things in perspective.
If I could come somewhat close to falling for a scam as a relatively young, emphasis on relatively vigilant adult who's very familiar with the internet and all these different scams.
And it stands to reason that elderly people are getting ripped off constantly.
As a 39 year old, my general familiarity with these kinds of scams was enough to set off the alarm bells at the last minute, stop me from doing something really stupid.
But if I was your 75 year old grandfather, it'd be a different story.
Now, put another way, enormous amounts of money are being stolen, primarily by foreigners who despise this country.
This problem has long since reached epidemic levels.
The vast majority of Americans have been targeted by attempted scams, they are targeted all the time.
In fact, the majority of Americans receive scam calls and texts weekly, if not daily.
And a lot of Americans are losing a lot of money, sometimes their life savings, because of it.
Now, we have no idea where specifically that money is going.
And when you understand the implications of this theft, then you quickly realize that this is a genuine national security crisis.
It's not a civil matter or a nuisance or.
Anything like that.
Bombs should be dropped.
That's not an exaggeration.
This is one foreign intervention that every rational American would support wholeheartedly without any reservation.
It's also very easy to do.
And if that sounds like hyperbole or something that will never happen, consider the fact that less than a year ago, Thailand began conducting targeted airstrikes against scam call centers in Cambodia.
They got fed up with the constant fraud that was ripping off their citizens, so they blew up the source of the fraudulent phone calls and text messages.
Really, these call center operations are organized as small villages complete with dorms where the scammers sleep.
And Thailand demolished these compounds one by one.
They only stopped when the U.S. brokered a ceasefire, which was obviously a huge mistake that we should rectify immediately.
And we'll get more into detail on Thailand's military campaign and how the United States can emulate it in just a second.
It's a truly crazy story, particularly when you hear about how the scammers' Chinese handlers responded to the bombing raid.
This is one of the least discussed military campaigns in recent history, but it's one of the most important because of the precedent that it could set.
But before we talk about that military campaign and how to obliterate these scammers with B2 bombers, we need to establish the extent of the problem.
And it's a huge problem.
The scammers targeting Americans are extremely dedicated.
They don't let anything distract them, even for a second.
So, here, for example, is one call that, in the hands of a less experienced scammer, might have gotten derailed.
Watch how the scammer handles it.
Watch.
Can you please give me your credit card number so I can help you?
Yeah, sure.
Let me just pull over because I'm driving, all right?
Yeah, sure, sure, good.
Can you hear me?
I just had a car crash.
It's going to be all right.
Don't worry about it.
Do you have your credit card details?
I just had a car crash.
I'm bleeding.
I just need your credit card number.
That's all.
So he doesn't even flinch.
He thinks this woman just got hit by an 18 wheeler and she's bleeding out.
And what does he do?
He asks once more for her credit card number.
And there's a lesson there.
The scammers are relentless.
They're ruthless.
They don't feel human emotions.
And unless they're wiped off the face of the earth, they're not going to stop defrauding people.
Now, I will mention at the outset that my grand plan to bomb foreign scammers, of course, will not completely prevent Americans from getting scammed.
That's because we've imported a lot of scammers into this country, and most of them have gotten very creative.
This domestic scam, for example, is one that, if we're being honest, a lot of us would probably fall for.
It's extremely difficult to detect.
And frankly, most people would never see it coming.
Watch.
Look, it comes right off.
Erica Pender of Atlanta noticed something was off in her local parking garage.
It was like extra shiny, like it had been recently laminated.
I could see like it wasn't really a part of the fancy signs they have out there, and then I was able to just peel it right off.
Scammers putting fake QR codes over the real ones, hoping to trick parking garage customers into transferring them money.
They're moving fast.
You'll have to be careful, be alert, be aware.
The FBI says Erica is not alone.
Where are we seeing these QR scams happening?
Unfortunately, they're relatively widespread.
They are happening in parking lots.
They're happening in areas where you may anticipate this is a legitimate QR code and I'll scan it, but somebody has altered it.
Fake QR codes aren't just misdirecting your payment in garages like this one.
The FBI is telling us thieves often use QR codes to take your money and steal other important.
Personal information.
What happens when you scan a QR code that isn't the one you're supposed to be scanning?
It can give the criminal access to your phone, which then allows them access to any apps that you normally use.
It can also drop some sort of computer intrusion type of software that can alter your phone and steal credentials and that sort of thing.
So, the QR code scam is most effective when it's done in real life, just like this.
Nobody thinks twice when they scan the QR code at the local parking lot because they want to get out of there as quickly as possible.
And on top of that, it's hard to imagine that anybody would actually go through the trouble of messing with the payment terminal of a parking lot.
But the QR codes are slightly less effective when they're used for text message scams, where they're becoming more prevalent.
Take a look at these two letters, which were just sent to my producer over the last week via text message.
As you can see there, other than location, they're very similar.
They threaten some kind of enforcement action if you don't pay the fine for toll evasion, as well as speeding and some unexplained parking violations.
So they really covered their bases with this scam.
Just accuse you of committing every imaginable parking infraction in the hopes that you'll say to yourself, well, I must have done at least one of those.
But in order to clear this violation, you're directed to a QR code in the bottom right of the letter.
And when you follow that QR code, you're taken to a website with a very strange name, something about puffer jackets, which is obviously a red flag.
But if you don't notice the URL, the first thing you'll be asked to do is confirm that you're a human.
And it looks like a normal verification step, which you'll see on any number of websites.
But in reality, it's a way to download a virus to your computer.
Watch.
Okay, guys, I am really alarmed by this new scam going around, and I am someone who covers consumer news and scams for a living, so I could really see a lot of people falling for this one.
So, you know, those captcha boxes you have to click, I'm not a robot on?
Well, scammers have found a way to create fake versions of this that look real, but instead of clicking a button, what they actually want you to do is press a series of keys.
So, here's a real world example of what this looks like that someone shared on Reddit recently.
And here's the thing when you are running this sequence, what you are Actually, doing is running a command that will download malware onto your device.
That malware can steal your passwords, logins, potentially even banking information.
So, here's what you should know a real CAPTCHA message will never ask you to run a sequence of keys.
So, if you see that immediate red flag, close out of the tab immediately.
Now, after looking this up, here's how it works with some more detail.
If you press the button to verify that you're human, the website copies some malicious code to your computer, and then the website will ask you to press a few keys to Copy and paste that code and execute it.
And when it says press the Windows key and the R key, it's really telling you to open up a command window within your operating system.
Again, it's an effective scam because everybody's familiar with websites that tell you to verify that you're human.
So they hope you won't notice what they're doing as you try to verify your identity and pay your toll or your parking ticket or whatever.
Now, as simplistic as these scams might seem, they're extremely effective.
Millions of Americans are losing a ton of money because of them.
And while our government doesn't seem interested in doing anything really about it, They should be.
You could judge the merits of a government based on how well it protects its citizens from foreign threats.
That's one of the few fundamental core functions of any government.
And by that metric, despite fielding the single best military in the world and despite our supposedly advanced intelligence agencies, America is failing in this regard.
So here's the growth in scams over the last five years using the FBI's 2024 report.
So it's even worse now.
This is two years ago.
But this is from the FBI's Internet Crime Report.
Complaint Center, which says there were 859,000 scam complaints in 2024, including 256,000 complaints with actual loss totaling more than $16 billion.
The average loss was $19,000.
Now, for comparison, as you can see, losses were around $6 billion in 2021, $13 billion in 2023.
So the losses are stacking up.
This epidemic is growing exponentially.
And these are just the people who have logged official complaints.
It doesn't count the people who get scammed and Don't realize it, or the people who get scammed and never bother to report it, which probably happens a lot if the losses are relatively low, then a lot of people probably think, well, there's no point in reporting it because nothing's going to be done about it.
So, you know, the problem is bad and it's getting worse.
And even now, it's worse than it looks and it looks pretty bad.
And in particular, older people are getting hit the hardest, as you might expect.
As you can see on the graphic there, people over the age of 60 are reporting more scams than any other age group.
And they're losing more money as well.
And what's interesting about this chart is that the number of reported scams drops by quite a bit around 30,000 between the ages of 50 and 59.
And then after that age group, the number jumps up again.
And you can come up with your own theory as to why that might be the case.
Most likely it's because people in their 50s are old enough to be wise and savvy about these things, but not so old that they're totally out of touch with modern technology and easily confused.
But whatever the case, as for the specific scams that people are getting hit with, Here's the data on that point.
Gold courier scams are an interesting one that happened a few hundred times and caused hundreds of millions of damages.
Apparently, the way this works is that scammers convince people to hand over their gold to them at the front door of their homes.
The scammers promise to safeguard the gold or something along those lines, and then they just walk away with it, I guess.
Toll scams, like the one I almost fell for, accounted for 60,000 complaints, but only 120,000, 9,000 in total losses, which is a high number of complaints, more than any other category on the page, but it's also the lowest amount of total losses.
So the.
Toll scams are stealing, you know, a few bucks from people on average.
No one's getting scared into paying a $500 toll or anything like that.
But the important point is they're giving away their credit card information, which, even if they're not taking a lot from you up front, can obviously create a lot of problems down the line.
Watch.
They make you feel like you better do this or there's severe consequences for not paying this toll.
Sue Walters had just returned from a spring break road trip.
When she got a text claiming to be from EasyPass, demanding $6.68 for an unpaid toll.
The Dangers of Wire Transfer Fraud00:15:40
The message threatened severe penalties, including suspension of her registration if she didn't pay within hours.
Having just crossed the Ohio River, she thought it could be legit.
Even though she's usually skeptical, the timing, the small amount, and the urgency tricked her into giving up her credit card information.
But when the site asked for a second card and she spotted the typo in the URL, she knew something was wrong.
What's really frustrating is that it's hard to catch them.
You know, I'd love to see them heavily prosecuted when you steal people's personal information, but it's really hard to do that.
So they're out.
So unfortunately, the person that scammed me is still out there, right?
So the scammer's still out there, but we can do something about it, as we'll discuss momentarily.
We don't have to just sit back helplessly while.
You know, scamming while these scammers run roughshod over the population, especially older people, and steal billions of dollars.
And like I said, it's only going to get worse.
You don't do anything about it, it's only going to get worse, a lot worse.
But for now, let's keep going down the list of scams.
Call center scams are by far the most profitable, raking in nearly 2 billion in losses in a single year with 53,000 complaints.
Typically, this involves tech support scams where they call you and tell you that your computer has been hacked and you need to pay them to fix it.
Category also includes fake calls from a brokerage or cryptocurrency website, which convince people to hand over their account credentials or transfer money.
Also, included here are so called pig butchering scams.
Now, usually these scams follow a straightforward routine.
So it starts with a wrong number text.
And if you've noticed like a weird uptick recently in people texting you because they supposedly think you're somebody else, you know, a wrong number, and I've noticed that, it's probably one of these scams.
And they're all over the place now.
So the way it works is that the scammer hopes that you'll text back to tell them that they have the wrong number, which is a normal thing to do.
But then they strike up a conversation and they befriend you, often trying to portray themselves as somebody attractive and wealthy.
And then they're hoping you'll think that, wow, this is an interesting coincidence.
You know, it's this person texts me wrong number, but they are so nice and friendly.
And look, we're having a little, now we're becoming pen pals.
Isn't that cute?
Well, eventually they try to rope you into whatever scam they're running.
Often it'll be something like a cryptocurrency website, which they control.
Might look like a real website, but it's fake.
And they'll tell you to invest some money on the website, and then they'll rig the numbers so that your investment looks like it's increasing.
Again, it's all fake.
They control the website.
The scam is designed to extract more and more money from people since they think they're getting great returns.
And then when they try to withdraw the money, they realize that they've been defrauded.
Now, the reason they call this a pig butchering scam, by the way, is that the scammer tries to fatten you up, essentially grooming you as they pretend to be your friend and all this kind of stuff.
And they make you think that they're very wealthy and very financially savvy.
But really, they're preparing you for the slaughter financially, basically.
There are some common variations on this scam.
Here's one of them.
Watch.
And the FBI says tens of billions of dollars are lost every year to these types of scams.
And for this couple, it started going online and looking at videos from social media influencers.
And they wanted to share their story as a warning to others.
In the end, it was a really bad choice, but the opportunity looked great at the moment.
Daniel Hovland's family is trying to bounce back after falling prey to an online scam that drained their life savings.
He says it started last May when his wife answered an ad on Facebook to earn some money on the side.
I was like, It looks like a scam and you shouldn't get involved with it.
The job?
Looking at videos online, then liking and sharing them to help social media influencers monetize their accounts.
It would allow them to monetize faster, thus, we would be getting a cut of their monetization.
He says his wife was getting paid through a digital account, then he started doing it and they were making more and more money.
I consistently got paid.
And it's not normal for a scam to pay you.
Hovland then encouraged other family and friends to jump on board.
He says they would have to reinvest money to reach new earning levels, sort of like multi-level marketing.
Hovland says it lasted for about six months.
Then suddenly the company's website was gone, and through a chat room, they were told they were fired.
Then they realized their money was also gone.
Nearly $40,000 of the Hovland's money, around half a million for the entire group.
It was dramatic.
It's definitely one of the toughest times I think that we've ever had to go through.
It's a scam known as pig butchering.
It's like they're fattening you up to basically get, you know, for slaughter later.
So, when you compare to other losses, this $40,000 actually got off kind of easy.
It's all relative.
That was their life savings.
But in terms of sheer numbers, people lose a lot more than that.
This woman gave away a million dollars for no apparent reason.
Watch.
Almost a million dollars gone.
I know.
And then I had to tell my kids because they had no idea I had that kind of money.
All that money was socked away in investments, and now Erica Damask is in financial ruin.
In fact, she was forced to sell her Lombard home and everything in it.
This is my garage sale.
It's really hard because a lot of the stuff, there's glasses here that belong to my husband and I have to sell them.
Her husband passed away decades ago and recently Damask met a man online.
He said he loved me.
But the FBI says that tactic is just part of the fattening up or pig butchering.
Fraudsters are going to fatten up the victims by putting more, enticing the victims to put more money into an investment.
And then they're going to slaughter them by walking away and stealing their money.
He's working on an oil rig and something broke down.
Can I send him $20,000?
And I said, Whoa.
I said, You know what?
I need to pray about this.
The second time I sent $35,000.
Over time, that money sent reached nearly $1 million.
DeMass says the scammer told her she would get double her money back in his investments.
Instead, she now owes money back to her.
Bank cash which she took from her home equity loan.
Plus, she must pay taxes on her investment withdrawals.
She was sending $100,000, $300,000, $50,000 at a time, and it was never brought up and stopped and checked.
She and her son say the money was sent via cashier's checks or wire transfers through Fifth Third Bank.
They say when they filed reports with the FBI and the Secret Service, agents told them that bankers should have spotted unusual patterns.
They never questioned why are you closing this whole account.
But in this letter to Damascus, Fifth Third said it asked a series of questions that the customer must answer before.
Before a wire transfer is sent, and that her answers provided did not raise concern for potential fraud.
So she doesn't have any kind of realization that she made a mistake.
Instead, her first reaction is to go on television and blame the bank for, quote, never questioning why I closed this whole account.
So apparently, it's the bank's responsibility to inform you that despite what you may believe it's a terrible idea to wire a million dollars to somebody you've never met, it's the bank's job to tell you what to do with your money, I guess.
But as unsympathetic as this woman might be, In some of these stories, people are unsympathetic because they do things that are really, really stupid.
But, you know, she's got nothing on this guy with the IQ and morals of a houseplant from the San Francisco Bay Area.
Watch.
I had this all ready to go.
All ready to go.
Adon Look was packed and ready to fly off to a new life.
Pack clothes, pants.
He'd be joining the young woman he met on Facebook.
Together, they'd build their dream home in Hawaii.
Even swimming trunks, walk on the beach.
Yeah.
Her name was Anissa.
He called her Annie.
They'd been chatting on WhatsApp since last May.
Brand new pants.
Brand new.
Had them tailored.
Annie said she was from Japan working in micro trip sales.
Her family had made millions.
He told her he was alone, his wife in a nursing home.
Told her that, you know, there's no one here to cook for me.
It's just me.
You know, she assured me, well, you know, I'll be doing the cooking for you.
She promised to visit, even sent flight information.
Yet she never came.
I was head over heels, pretty much out of control, ready to do anything.
And then she said she was into crypto.
Annie told him she'd made millions investing in crypto.
He could too.
They'd make enough to build a life in Hawaii.
I was ready to fly.
I was ready to go.
I was going to start a new life with this person.
I didn't know what had happened to my dad.
It was kind of this, like he flipped a switch into someone I hadn't seen before.
Adon's son, Jonathan of Hayward, saw signs of trouble.
Some pictures of a woman, an Asian woman.
He saw the text messages about love and investing.
He confronted his dad.
Well, you're a married man.
What is this?
I don't know, 20 something year old woman.
I wasn't paying no attention to it because I was too immersed in my bubble.
Then Jonathan discovered this $300,000 wire transfer to a fake company and a deposit into an unknown account.
Immediately shifted to red flags everywhere.
Later, he discovered his dad also wired thousands of dollars directly to banks in Malaysia and Vietnam.
First $5,000, then $100,000, then another $100,000.
He told me he was investing and that, um, not to worry.
But Jonathan was worried.
He warned his dad these crypto websites he was using appeared fake, so the $6 million in his account was not really there.
Annie herself probably didn't exist.
Dad, your friends and I need to talk about the romance scam you are a victim of.
Adon replied, No, I'm good, Jonathan.
My choice, my life.
Ready to run away from everyone.
So he thinks he's turned his $500,000 investment into $6 million, and he only realizes something's wrong when he tries to withdraw the money.
But he's told he needs to spend $25,000 more to unlock his account, and he doesn't have $25,000 anymore because he's given everything he has to this non existent woman while he was cheating on his terminally ill wife.
His defense when he was confronted by his family was let me live my last few years, okay?
And it's hard not to conclude based on that statement that he realized at some level that he was being ripped off, but he didn't care.
Doesn't think he's.
Going to be alive for much longer, and he's probably right.
So, in his mind, the value of the money is extremely low.
He's obviously not loyal to his family, so he's not concerned with their inheritance or anything like that.
So, he's happy to waste the money on the slim chance that his phantom relationship is actually real.
That's the pig butchering scam, basically.
And although that guy is a scumbag and an idiot, a lot of people get sucked into it who are neither of those things, who are just decent, normal, and even relatively intelligent people.
And these kinds of scams are usually run out of big call centers.
Which we'll come back to the call centers in a moment.
There's also the emergency scam where people are pressured into paying money to save their relatives from some kind of disaster.
This is a more rare form of a scam, but it costs victims millions of dollars every year.
If you're tempted to think that you'd never fall for something like that, well, consider the fact that these scams are now using AI to mimic the voice and sometimes even the appearance of people who are close to the victim.
So, you might get a call from somebody who sounds a lot like a family member.
And in isolation, you know, when you hear a news report about these kinds of scams, it's easy to underestimate them.
The fact is that most people, when they think that their family member is in trouble, they're going to panic.
And when you panic, you tend to make quick and often pretty bad decisions.
And as AI gets more and more sophisticated, these scams are going to get more and more difficult to detect.
We could very well reach a point where you basically can't trust any call you receive from anyone, including people you know, because of the way that the technology is getting more sophisticated.
Now, for now, these AI scams are one of the reasons you should never answer the phone when you don't recognize the number.
If you start talking to an AI bot, it can capture a voice sample in just a few seconds.
So even if you just say, hey, who is this?
That might be enough.
And the scammers can make the AI say anything they want in your voice.
It sounds very unlikely because right now it is statistically unlikely, but according to this FBI data, it happened to at least 357 people in 2024.
That was two years ago.
Think about how much more sophisticated the technology is even today.
So, as the technology improves, it'll happen more often.
And the upshot here is that you should never answer the phone for numbers you don't recognize.
You should never text anybody back if you don't recognize the number.
You get a wrong number text, just ignore it, delete the text.
And you should never open any emails from email addresses you don't recognize.
Now, that may seem paranoid, but at this point, it's just a basic step to protect yourself.
Then there's rental scams, which are extremely common now.
Basically, scammers advertise a property which they don't control, and they charge you an application fee that they never refund.
Often, they'll steal the listing, including photos and videos of the property from a legitimate source.
And that's the more sophisticated version of that.
A lot of these scams are being run out of foreign countries, as you might imagine.
And as for what the scammers are doing with the money that they're stealing, well, we really have no idea.
Here's the latest information on the FBI as to where fraudulent checks are going to the extent that they can even track them.
You can see it right there.
In order, top destinations for fraudulent checks are Hong Kong, Vietnam, Mexico, the Philippines, India, and China.
So that's where most of the money is going.
As for where the money mostly is coming from, according to NBC, the District of Columbia, Nevada, and Wyoming report the highest per capita losses to online scams.
Now, on the bright side, something you should keep in mind if you're ever scammed for a large amount of money is that your money isn't necessarily lost forever once you make a wire transfer.
In March of 2024, the FBI's Denver field office reported that individuals were in the process of purchasing property and receiving a spoofed email from their supposed real estate agents requesting that they wire $956,000 to a U.S. domestic bank to finalize the closing.
Two days after the wire was initiated, the victims realized the instructions came from a spoofed email.
Upon notification, the recovery asset team Immediately initiated the process to freeze the fraudulent recipient bank account.
The transfer was stopped and the money was returned to the individuals.
International Scam Centers Under Fire00:10:11
So that's a little bit of good news.
Wire transfers can be reversed in a sense if you catch them quickly enough, although I certainly wouldn't bet on it.
Better to just not wire money to anyone you don't know because in most cases, you've probably lost your money forever.
And there's a good chance it's being wired to foreign countries that seek the destruction of the United States.
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And that's why, and I don't think this should even be a controversial suggestion, we should immediately drone strike every illegal foreign call center that scams American citizens, regardless of where it's located.
And it's just obvious.
Why shouldn't we do that?
And after we're done with some place like Nigeria, we could turn to countries like Cambodia, which are full of scammers to a degree that's frankly difficult.
To even believe, but it's true.
Turns out that Cambodia's entire economy is dependent on scamming.
And sort of like Somalia for so long was their whole economy was based around piracy, less so today because of the crackdown on piracy.
Now they just come here and scam Americans.
But just like that, Cambodia's whole economy is based on scamming.
If they weren't defrauding Americans, they'd have basically nothing left.
According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, quote, Cambodia has emerged as a central hub of this illicit economy.
The country hosts more than 50 scam centers, and the revenue from these operations exceeds $12.5 billion annually, roughly half the country's formal GDP.
Senior Cambodian government officials and business elites are reportedly involved in and benefit from scam operations.
For instance, Chen Zia'a, a Chinese Cambodian national who the U.S. Department of the Treasury sanctioned for operating a transnational criminal enterprise through online investment scams, served as an advisor to both current Prime Minister Hun Manet.
And former Prime Minister Hun Sen, as well as other senior Cambodian government figures.
Yes, half the country's GDP comes from scamming at a minimum.
100,000 people are employed in scam operations in the country, according to the UN, and in these centers that we know where they are.
We know where the centers are, and we know that they exist purely to steal money, mostly from Americans.
Why exactly should we put up with that?
What would be the reason?
And the most senior politicians in the country are directly profiting from this arrangement.
There's no reason whatsoever why the United States should allow this.
Cambodia's Air Force has zero fixed wing combat aircraft.
We already have air supremacy, and we haven't even started bombing them.
This would be the shortest military campaign in recorded history, or at least since we took over Venezuela a few months ago.
So, why are we doing that?
Thailand has already taken action.
Last year, the Thai military bombed six casino and hotel complexes in Cambodia, including the Osmach Resort and the Royal Hill Resort, as well as a casino compound that the U.S. government claimed was involved in cryptocurrency fraud.
Thailand claimed that the facilities were being used for military purposes, but they also declared that they'd had enough of the fraud, and Cambodia's government knew exactly what was going on.
This is from Bloomberg.
Watch.
Thailand says it's deadly.
Clashes with Cambodia aren't just about a border dispute.
It's recast its motives to say it's also a wall against scammers.
A sprawling scam ecosystem here in Cambodia has swindled billions of dollars, primarily through so-called pig butchering and call center schemes.
And Thailand is often used as a transit hub for traffic victims forced to be part of the fraud.
You cannot use one-issued scam to invade the country.
That's my own opinion.
But Thailand's framing also shows it's trying to align itself with both the U.S. and China.
Both countries are separately pushing Southeast Asian nations to crack down on scammers who have targeted American and Chinese citizens.
Thailand's Prime Minister Anu Tenchand Rirakun also named tackling scam operations as part of his national agenda after taking office last year.
The U.S. interest in the conflict also saw President Donald Trump overseeing a peace accord last October between Cambodia and Thailand.
The calm from that was fairly short lived after tensions escalated again last month.
Last year's bouts of fighting ranked among the deadliest between the two countries, leaving hundreds of thousands displaced and dozens of people dead, although Cambodia has not disclosed the number of military casualties.
You cannot use one issue scams to invade a country, he says.
That's the line from the Deputy Prime Minister of Cambodia.
And of course, he's completely wrong.
I mean, you can, in fact, do that because they're scamming and bankrupting your citizens.
It's actually one of the most logical justifications for a military action you can come up with.
If one country is stealing billions of dollars from another country, ruining people's lives, that's an act of war.
And Thailand responded appropriately.
In December of last year, the New York Times ran an in depth on the ground report about Thailand's bombing campaign on these scam call centers.
And here's how it began Two weeks ago, Phiyip Sriman had just gotten up in her dorm in a scam center in the Cambodian border town of Osmach.
Pardon how to pronounce it, whatever.
When she said her supervisor ran and shouted, The bombs are coming.
Two Thai warplanes were circling overhead.
Miss Phiyip, a Cambodian, was running for safety when she heard the explosion behind her.
She said she saw a security guard dead on the ground, bleeding with pieces of shrapnel in his chest.
Two other guards were also injured.
The rules remained the same when the bombs fell.
The foreign workers were not allowed to leave, she said.
So the workers were locked to the compound as the bombing began.
And here's what the compound looked like this is from late last year after Thailand's military moved in.
Even their military officials were shocked by the size of the scam operation.
watch
well we've heard of stories about scam centers a couple of times in the past already but I was really shocked and taken back by the size of the compound itself
I'm quite sure this is an American SIM card.
It would be used for, like, make the American people believe and transfer money to the scammer.
So, more than 100, or rather, 10,000 people worked in this little village spanning 200 acres.
They have their own restaurants and dorms and everything.
And they find the American SIM card, which was obviously being used to defraud American citizens.
American bombardment of these scam centers.
It's what Colin Powell or Donald Rumsfeld would call a smoking gun.
And we should have acted on it.
But we didn't.
Only Thailand did.
And let's continue with the Times report because it starts to get truly surreal.
Quote The toll from the Thai airstrikes at the Osmach compound remains unclear, but videos posted on social media showed scores of people leaving the complex with their luggage.
Some were surveilled by their Chinese bosses and told that they had to continue working for them.
Security guard who kept watch outside an office inside the compound.
Said his bosses had locked up the foreign workers when the shelling started.
He said he worked at a building that the Cambodians called Animal Farm and that he guarded an office of 15 people, mainly Vietnamese and Chinese.
The workers had to ask him for permission to use the toilets and were only allowed to leave to have lunch at the restaurants within the compound.
Six workers inside the compound detailed a range of human rights abuses that they witnessed at work.
They spoke of seeing numerous workers beaten with shock batons, whipped with belts, made to stand for hours in the sun, forced to carry barrels of water on their backs for hours.
Grand Canyon University Education Spotlight00:03:20
And injected with serum.
One of them reported seeing dozens of people beaten to death.
Yes, the Chinese overseers are literally whipping the scammers into compliance, even as they're under direct military attack.
They're being forced to romance lonely American men and pretend to offer tech support to elderly women while bombs are actively being dropped.
Keep this in mind the next time you get a wrong number text from some crypto millionaire who happens to be an attractive woman, there's a good chance that this woman is really a Cambodian man who's.
Currently being beaten in submission by a Chinese overlord while dodging bombs at the same time.
And while it's very difficult to sympathize with these people, you have to admit it's quite a remarkable visual.
To borrow the neocon argument, we have no choice but to liberate them from their oppressors.
We have a moral obligation to commence regime change in these scammer villages.
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American Citizens Targeted by Superpower00:04:08
And while we're at it, we can't overlook the involvement of the Chinese here, which is an important point.
Many of these scam operations are almost certainly directed by the Chinese Communist Party.
It's an attack on American citizens that's organized by a superpower.
And yet, to my knowledge, no American politician has suggested that we do anything serious against these criminals.
Instead, we just sanction them, which accomplishes absolutely nothing.
And meanwhile, after Thailand bombs these scammers, reporters uncover clear evidence that they're trying to rip off Americans.
Watch.
The site has more than 150 buildings split into zones.
One of them, Zone E, targeted victims in the US, Europe, India, and Vietnam.
Workers followed strict shifts.
From 9 pm to 3 am, lining up with Western time zones.
I'm quite sure this is an American SIM card.
It would be used to make the American people believe and transfer money to the scammer.
Inside the offices, investigators found scam manuals in multiple languages, scripts for romance scams, impersonation schemes, Even playbooks for targeting people who had already been scammed before.
And when targets were hit, they didn't just log it, they celebrated.
Some officers had large red victory drums beaten when scammers met their financial targets.
Now, another interesting point about China is that it's one of the only countries in the world, to my knowledge, that executes scammers.
So they facilitate scams against Americans, but if you scam their people, They will arrest you and put you to death.
In fact, they just carried out the execution of 11 people from Myanmar who were found guilty of participating in these kinds of scams against Chinese citizens.
And on this front, at least, China has the right idea.
Scamming should be a capital offense.
People found guilty of it in this country should be given the death penalty.
According to Pew, 31% of Americans say they get scam phone calls every single day, 21% of Americans say they get scam phone calls multiple times per day.
A third of Americans say they get scam emails every day.
20% say they get scam text messages.
All this is happening because foreigners are gathering together with extraordinary efficiency and discipline, often enforced by the Communist Party of China, in easily identifiable compounds for the sole purpose of stealing billions of dollars from American citizens.
They aren't anywhere near as anonymous or as untraceable as you've been led to believe.
They are, in fact, extremely vulnerable out in the open.
If the military of Thailand can disrupt their operations, then we can end them for good.
We don't have to settle for blocking these numbers or relying on the useless do not call list or any of that.
We can actually deploy our military to do exactly what it exists to do defend American citizens from foreign threats.
They can blow up our cell phones, metaphorically.
We can blow them up, literally.
That's our competitive advantage in the world, as Donald Trump realized long ago.
Now, one call center at a time, we need to use it.
That will do it for the show today.
Thanks for watching.
Thanks for listening.
Talk to you tomorrow.
Have a great day.
Godspeed.
I do believe that if people have committed treason against the United States of America, their statues should not be in the Capitol.
History is written by the victors.
And since the 1960s, we've been told, mostly by people whose ancestors didn't even live here during the war, the South committed treason.
But if the Confederates were traitors, then why was Jefferson Davis never put on trial for treason?
Lincoln Statues and Competitive Advantage00:00:21
What were Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson afraid of?
Did they know something they're not allowed to say today?
It's time for the truth.
So here it is.
Robert E. Lee was a military genius and a man of immense honor.
He was beloved by Americans from the North and South for a century after the war.