This week, Cambodia welcomes foreign diplomats, law-enforcement officials and financial regulators to Phnom Penh for the International Conference on Combating Online Scams. Prime Minister Hun Manet’s administration is presenting the gathering as proof that it is ready to confront a criminal trade that has ruined lives across the globe. Yet the official messaging also reveals a more immediate concern. When the conference was announced, Cambodia’s state news agency said it was intended in part to help “restore the country’s reputation on the international stage." There is nothing unreasonable about wanting that reputation repaired, but it cannot be bought with handshakes and photo opportunities. Cambodia has spent years at the center of Southeast Asia’s scam economy, while reporters, volunteers and human rights monitors documented forced labor, beatings and industrial fraud inside guarded compounds — including properties connected to figures close to the ruling elite. Now that international pressure has forced a reaction, Phnom Penh is asking governments whose citizens it has