Raids against online scam centres in Madagascar have exposed ties with a criminal group that ran similar operations in Cambodia .
The sites conducting romance, cryptocurrency and investment fraud were mostly operated by Chinese nationals and 148 of those rounded up have been extradited to China, Madagascar's justice ministry said.
Thirteen Chinese-run scam compounds were taken down in operations in August and September conducted with the US justice department, it added.
About US$52 million ($72 million) of cryptocurrency was seized in a single day and more than 3,200 electronic devices were also collected, the US authority said in a statement.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime had warned last year about the expansion of these networks, particularly into Southern Africa.
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Eleven Chinese nationals arrested separately in the online scam crackdown mysteriously walked free from a Madagascar jail in August in a widely publicised scandal allegedly implicating the head of the prison service.
Several African nationals remained in custody, even though initial findings suggested they may have been victims of human trafficking, officials said.
As with scam operations in Southeast Asia, the Madagascar centres allegedly lured Africans to the Indian Ocean island via social media and with promises of salaries.
Around 20 nationals of Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda and Zimbabwe were duped, authorities said.
"According to their statements, they were recruited via Facebook to come work in Madagascar in the commercial sector," the police crime unit chief Hassan Mouigni told AFP.
"But when they arrived here, most of the passports were confiscated by the boss and they were forced to scam," he said. "They were victims of deception."
The man charged with running one romance scam scheme was a Malaysian national, identified as Chui Kok Wa, who had installed himself in a villa in the upscale Ivato neighbourhood near the capital, Antananarivo, the US authorities said.
"From the visa in his passport, we were able to deduce that he arrived here for the first time in 2024. According to the passport, he was previously in Cambodia," Mouigni said.
The US justice department said it believed his "criminal group with connections to Malaysia and China opened scam compounds in Madagascar in early 2025, likely having moved those operations from Cambodia after law enforcement action in that country".
The coordinator of the cybercrime unit at Madagascar's communications ministry, Tsitohaina Ralihivao, drew a connection with a 2025 crackdown on scam compounds in Cambodia near the border with Thailand, when their militaries also clashed.
"When the Thais dismantled them, they just relocated the operations. The same organisations came to Madagascar," Ralihivao told AFP.
An FBI court document shared by the US justice department drew a similar conclusion after questioning three Brazilian nationals who worked at a scam compound in Antananarivo.
"These individuals reported that they originally responded to work opportunities posted online, and ended up working at a compound located in Cambodia.
"Later, in part due to an armed conflict between Cambodia and Thailand, and also in response to police activity in Cambodia related to scam compounds, the witnesses were moved to Antananarivo, Madagascar, in early May 2026," it said.
"Cyber scam centres are increasingly opening in Africa following the closure of such compounds in Southeast Asia," the FBI added.
US authorities had intervened because these centres "primarily targeted English-speaking countries," including the US, Canada and Pakistan, Mouigni said.
The arrival of scam centres has not gone unnoticed in the capital of Madagascar.
"Before they occupied villas that were a little discreet. What alerted us was that they started renting entire hotels," Mouigni said.
The suspected head of one compound installed at the Live Hotel in the city was a Chinese national who was among those extradited to Beijing.
Like all "Chinese nationals identified as leaders," he could not be questioned by the FBI, a US federal police said in court documents.
