Vietnamese police arrested 24 suspects this week in a Cambodia-based romance scam operation. The man who said he loved her was working a phone bank in Poipet, and the script he read had been read to thousands of women before her.
A 39-year-old Japanese national identified only as Mr. Sasaki was arrested in Bangkok's Thonglor district on June 6 after running what Japanese prosecutors allege was a billion-yen call center empire out of Poipet, Cambodia. The voices on the phone were trafficked. The grandmothers on the other end were not.
A jury convicted the manager of the Salt City Inn on charges of exploiting prostitution and money laundering. The case turned on a simple front-desk transaction the state called a tariff on harm.