Thirteen online scam centers were dismantled in Madagascar between August and September, closing out an operation that law enforcement had tracked across two continents. The raids, carried out jointly with American authorities, netted 52 million dollars in cryptocurrency and 3,200 electronic devices, according to the American Department of Justice. Madagascar’s justice system said the sites ran romance scams, cryptocurrency fraud and Ponzi schemes, and that most were operated by Chinese nationals, 148 of whom have been extradited to China.
The enforcement push also exposed how these centers were built and run. Malagasy authorities told AFP that a criminal group previously based in Cambodia relocated to the island after a crackdown there, and that the scheme carried the hallmarks of a human trafficking operation targeting African nationals. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) had warned the previous year about the spread of such networks, notably in southern Africa.
At the center of the investigation is the suspected leader of a scam hub installed in a villa in the upscale Ivato district near Antananarivo. He is a Malaysian national, Chui Kok Wa, whose extradition has been requested by the FBI, according to a Department of Justice statement. Malagasy police cybercrime chief commissioner Hassan Mouigni explained how his movements were reconstructed: “From the visa in his passport, we were able to deduce that he arrived here for the first time in 2024. He was previously in Cambodia.” Cambodia had become a stronghold of cybercrime until a recent tightening by its authorities.
What changed after that tightening is central to the case. American investigators assess that his criminal organization, “with links to Malaysia and China,” “probably moved these operations from Cambodia following a law enforcement intervention in that country.” Tsitohaina Ralihivao, coordinator of the cybercrime unit at Madagascar’s Ministry of Communication, ties the arrival of these networks to the border clashes between Cambodia and Thailand in July 2025. The Thai army had then shown the media abandoned scam centers along the frontier. “When the Thais dismantled them, they simply moved the operations. It is the same organizations that came to Madagascar,” he told AFP. An FBI judicial document, shared by the Department of Justice, supports this reading: “cyber-scam centers are increasingly taking root in Africa following the closure of such complexes in Southeast Asia.”
That document records the testimony of three Brazilian nationals who had worked in a scam center in Antananarivo. After “responding to online job offers and finding themselves working in a complex located in Cambodia,” the witnesses were transferred to Antananarivo in early May 2026, in part because of “an armed conflict between Cambodia and Thailand,” according to the deposition.
The staffing of these centers is what gives the case its trafficking dimension. Around twenty Rwandan, Zimbabwean, Ugandan and Kenyan nationals were drawn to the island through social media with promises of salaries. “They say they were recruited via Facebook to work in commerce in Madagascar. But on arrival, most of the passports were confiscated by the boss and they were forced to scam,” commissioner Hassan Mouigni detailed to AFP. “They were victims of deception.” As of now, the African nationals remain incarcerated, even though initial investigative findings suggest they may have been victims of human trafficking.
The enforcement push was triggered in part by the profile of the victims these centers targeted, which were “mainly English-speaking countries,” “Americans, Canadians, Pakistanis,” according to Mouigni, hence “the need for nationals of English-speaking African countries,” Ralihivao specified. The scale of the Malagasy operations had also become harder to hide. “Before, they occupied rather discreet villas; what alerted us is that they started renting entire hotels,” the commissioner added. That was the case at the Live Hotel in Antananarivo, whose alleged manager, a Chinese national named “Huang Jidi” or “Wang Jidi,” was extradited by Beijing. Like all “Chinese nationals identified as leaders,” the FBI observed, he could not be questioned by the American federal police.
Meanwhile, the operation has produced a domestic scandal for Madagascar’s judicial system. Eleven of the arrested Chinese nationals were mysteriously released from prison in an affair implicating Keeper of the Seals Fanirisoa Ernaivo. One of the accused claims she ordered their release, which she denies.
The reference article was published by Outre-mer La 1ère at https://la1ere.franceinfo.fr/mayotte/une-apparente-traite-d-etres-humains-derriere-les-centres-d-arnaques-en-ligne-demanteles-a-madagascar-1753881.html.
By Raphaël Cann, AFP.