Cambodian military police have arrested a 33-year-old Chinese man and seized a grey Toyota Prius suspected of carrying an SMS blaster in Sihanoukville. Officers detained Deng Chenghu outside the Ming Yang condominium on 9 October 2026.
The equipment recovered from the car included a power inverter, two antennas and three mobile phones, one of which was described as being used to control the SMS blaster. Police also seized the suspect’s passport. The Prius had the Kampot registration number 2B-4152.
The arrest took place at approximately 4:20pm in Village 5, Sangkat 4. Five members of the provincial gendarmerie’s security-intelligence investigation unit participated in the operation. Deng and the seized equipment were taken to provincial gendarmerie headquarters for further questioning.
This is far from the first time that Cambodian police have discovered suspected SMS blasters being transported in cars. In October 2025, police arrested another driver in Sihanoukville, a 24-year-old Cambodian man who had two SMS blasters in the back seat of his Toyota Prius.
Less than two weeks later, police set up a roadblock on 28 Mithona Street in Sihanoukville, searching 624 vehicles between 10pm and 1am. Two of the cars were found to contain SMS blasters.
In December 2025, police in Phnom Penh stopped another rented Prius carrying an SMS blaster. That investigation led them to a lock-up containing a large stockpile of SMS blaster equipment, seemingly awaiting installation in more vehicles.
Unlike those earlier cases, there has not yet been confirmation that the equipment seized in the latest arrest was used to send fraudulent SMS messages.
The incident has been added to the SMS blaster map on the Commsrisk Global Fraud Dashboard. Photographs of the latest arrest are reproduced below.
