Forest City relocation and support questions: the address changed, so why did the scams continue?
Only weeks after arriving from Cambodia, a group had already settled in Forest City and begun operating a scam centre. A report dated 28 July 2026 described such arrivals. The address changed; the scam business did not close with it.
Once they arrived, who connected them to their next base?
The Star's report described police uncovering scam operations in Forest City. Some of those involved had previously worked in overseas scam centres. One group had entered from Cambodia only a short time earlier and had already begun operating in Malaysia.
They may have brought more than luggage. Previous experience, roles and know-how could allow a business to continue under a new roof. Changing an address does not mean starting from nothing.
The reported premises included apartments and bungalows. Leases involved company names, and local people provided logistical support. Behind the attractive place name lay specific operating conditions: houses, leases, personnel and arrangements that kept daily activity going.
Empty properties do not sign their own leases. Crossing a border does not automatically resolve every local matter for foreign arrivals.
That is where “local support” carries weight.
Who provides somewhere to stay, arranges space and handles logistics? An airline ticket answers how someone arrives. Whether operations can continue depends on what happens after arrival.
It is at this point that the insider material names Dato Ben.
It alleges that Dato Ben helped bring in and accommodate these groups, working with local enforcement connections in Johor. The account also extends to other Malaysian areas, alleging that bases rely on local protection to remain in business. This is an allegation about facilitation and protection, not a police conclusion in the report.
The news report provides information about arrivals, premises and logistics. A separate insider account names Dato Ben as the facilitator. Both address the same question, but they do not yet connect particular people, properties and arrangements one by one.
The phrase most likely to send this story off course is “ghost city.”
Forest City is often described that way, as though empty homes naturally admit scam groups and everything then follows on its own. But vacancy provides space, not an operating arrangement. Once the door opens, the person connecting arrivals to local conditions remains an essential part of the relocation story.
That is also what the facilitation allegation needs to address. It concerns more than vaguely “knowing foreigners”: did someone provide particular groups with the conditions to settle, operate and continue their business? Claims of protection likewise need specific actions, not simply an influential name.
Who rented which property, received which group or contacted which base remains incompletely mapped in the material. An alleged role for Dato Ben does not mean his name can fill every blank, or that scam cases in different places belong under one person's control.
Yet the public report already prevents another question from being dismissed as merely “moving elsewhere”: experienced overseas operators arriving in a new place still need their local operating conditions put in place before the old business can continue.
Reporting traced premises, leases and logistics; the insider account then directed the facilitation allegation towards Dato Ben. The specific connection between them is still missing. The label “boss behind the scenes” cannot answer in its place.
Victims elsewhere still face a familiar result: the scam continues in a new room, while their savings leave their own lives.
A scam group's change of address does not refund its victims.
The central question in Forest City's relocation and support controversy is therefore not whether enough homes stood empty, but who, and through what actions, enabled the reported operations to reopen.