The $100bn ghost city that became a haven for global scammers

A dream paradise that never happened

From the outside, Malaysia's Forest City looks like something from a futuristic film — rows of identical white towers rising from an artificial island beside the Singapore border.

When Chinese property giant Country Garden unveiled the extraordinary development in 2016, it was promoted as a $100 billion “dream paradise for all mankind”, designed to eventually accommodate around 700,000 people.

A decade later, the reality is dramatically different.

The vast 14-square-kilometre development is eerily quiet, with empty apartment towers, deserted streets and shuttered businesses. The population is believed to be fewer than 5,000 — less than one per cent of the number originally envisaged.

And now police say the ghost city has acquired another, far darker purpose.

Police uncover huge scam operation

In July, Malaysian police raided two alleged scam operations occupying 32 premises inside Forest City, arresting 335 people and seizing hundreds of computers, more than 1,500 mobile phones and other equipment.

Police say the operations were running cryptocurrency investment scams and romance scams targeting victims overseas.

The alleged criminal centres were not hidden away behind heavily fortified walls or in remote compounds. One reportedly occupied 27 apartments spread across five floors of a residential tower, while another operated from five bungalows.

Among those arrested were 309 Chinese nationals, 19 Indonesians, three Malaysians and four Myanmar nationals.

Malaysian authorities are now working with Interpol to identify the alleged mastermind behind the operations.

Why scammers chose a ghost city

Experts believe Forest City's greatest weakness became its greatest attraction to criminals: almost nobody lives there.

A local property worker told the BBC that scammers had been operating from condominiums and serviced apartments in the development for some time, describing the situation as an “open secret”.

The development's emptiness provides an extraordinary degree of privacy.

One tenant, who works in property sales, claimed Forest City tells potential customers that around 23,000 people live there, while privately estimating the real figure at fewer than 5,000.

“Nobody comes here,” he said.

For organised criminals looking for large, modern premises where suspicious activity can go unnoticed, that could make Forest City almost perfect.

From luxury paradise to criminal infrastructure

The development was supposed to become an exclusive eco-friendly metropolis aimed largely at wealthy Chinese buyers.

It was built with luxury apartments, a hotel, golf course, water park and commercial facilities, with its location less than five kilometres from Singapore adding to its appeal.

But the combination of Covid, China's property crisis and restrictions on Chinese citizens borrowing money to buy overseas property devastated those ambitions.

Only around 15 to 20 per cent of the originally proposed development has been completed.

The result is a bizarre landscape of enormous investment and tiny population — gleaming infrastructure without the people needed to make a city function.

A new generation of scam centres

Experts say the Forest City raids also demonstrate how the global scam industry is changing.

John Wojcik, an analyst at TRM Labs, told the BBC that major criminal organisations increasingly resemble multinational corporations, with recruitment departments, IT specialists, money-laundering experts and sophisticated infrastructure.

The traditional image of a heavily guarded scam compound is becoming outdated.

Instead, criminals can increasingly operate from apparently respectable residential and commercial developments, hiding in plain sight among ordinary residents.

Wojcik said Forest City provides almost everything such syndicates want: modern infrastructure, vacant properties, international connections and the appearance of legitimate economic activity.

The Cambodia connection

Authorities and experts believe some of those involved may have moved into Malaysia after being driven out of Cambodia, which has become notorious as a global centre for industrial-scale online scams.

Cambodian authorities have intensified their crackdown, with hundreds of thousands of people reportedly leaving the country as raids on large scam compounds increased.

But the criminals have not simply disappeared.

Instead, the industry appears to be moving, adapting and becoming more sophisticated.

Human trafficking and forced labour remain major features of the international scam business, but experts are also seeing experienced fraudsters being recruited for higher wages and better conditions.

Some are even advertising their services in online groups, posting résumés detailing their experience in different types of fraud.

Malaysia has seen this before

Forest City is not Malaysia's first encounter with organised scam centres.

Authorities have previously raided operations working out of luxury bungalows and condominiums in Johor, Penang and Kuala Lumpur.

But experts warn that the Forest City discoveries should be watched closely because they demonstrate how easily large criminal networks can exploit apparently legitimate developments.

The danger is not simply that criminals occupy empty buildings.

It is that the infrastructure built for legitimate commerce can make organised crime harder to detect.

Residents aren't exactly panicking

Perhaps the strangest aspect of Forest City's transformation is the reaction of some residents.

One local tenant admitted he was not particularly concerned that people living nearby could be involved in defrauding victims around the world.

Another resident, a technology worker who moved from Singapore last year, said he was not surprised to hear that scam centres had been operating in the development.

His bigger surprise was that Forest City is finally becoming more populated.

After years of seeing the complex described as a ghost town, he said more lights are now appearing in the apartment towers and more people are moving in.

That may be good news for the property developers.

But it creates an extraordinary irony.

The ghost city is finally coming alive

Forest City was supposed to be a futuristic symbol of Chinese investment, luxury living and international commerce.

Instead, its empty towers became attractive to a very different kind of entrepreneur.

The police raids may have removed hundreds of alleged scammers, but experts believe they could represent only the visible part of a much larger operation.

And as Forest City slowly begins to fill with residents, the question is whether its future will finally resemble the glittering paradise promised in 2016 — or whether the ghost city has already developed a very different reputation.

A $100 billion city designed for 700,000 people has, for now, found itself at the centre of an international criminal economy precisely because almost nobody came to live there.

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