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The US has seized more than $14 billion (€12bn) in bitcoin and charged the 38-year-old founder of a Cambodian conglomerate over an alleged global crypto fraud.
Prosecutors say the scam exploited forced labour, laundered billions, and bankrolled yachts, jets — even a Picasso.
In an indictment unsealed on Tuesday, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn charged Chen Zhi — also known as Vincent — the chairman of Prince Holding Group, with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to launder money.
In a coordinated push, US and UK authorities imposed sanctions on the group, while the US Treasury branded it a transnational criminal organisation.
Prosecutors said Chen presided over a “sprawling cyber-fraud empire” running so-called pig-butchering scams, confidence tricks that win over victims online before steering them into sham crypto investments.
At one point, Chen allegedly boasted the operation was pulling in $30 million (€25.78mn) a day.
Forced-labour compounds
According to the indictment, Prince built at least 10 compounds in Cambodia where workers, many of them migrants lured by fake job ads and then held against their will, were forced to bombard targets on social media and messaging apps.
When money flowed in, it was allegedly laundered through other Prince businesses and shell companies, sometimes spent on luxury travel, property, watches and art. One victim lost more than $400,000 (€343,700) in crypto.
The sites, prosecutors say, functioned as forced-labour camps, with dormitories encircled by high walls and barbed wire, and call-centre floors with racks of phones controlling tens of thousands of fake profiles.
One compound was linked to Prince’s Jinbei Casino Hotel, another was known as Golden Fortune. Treasury officials say workers were held captive, isolated and sometimes beaten.
Chen allegedly authorised at least one beating, warning only that the victim not be “beaten to death”.
The UN estimates around 100,000 people in Cambodia have been forced into online scams, with at least 120,000 in Myanmar and tens of thousands more in Thailand, Laos and the Philippines.
Repaying victims
Chen remains at large, prosecutors said. If convicted, he faces up to 40 years in prison. The US said it had seized 127,271 bitcoins, assets that could be used to compensate victims if a court allows it. The value of the coins — currently around €97,200 each — will continue to fluctuate in the meantime.
Washington last year sanctioned another Cambodian tycoon, Ly Yong Phat, over alleged forced labour, human trafficking and online scams — part of a broader squeeze on Southeast Asia’s scam hubs.
Chinese authorities have also probed the Prince group for cyber scams and money laundering since at least 2020, according to court records cited by researchers.
Politics, power — and a warning to financiers
Chen, who has served as an adviser to Prime Minister Hun Manet and former leader Hun Sen, was honoured with the title “neak oknha” — often compared to an English lordship. That proximity to power, analysts say, has long shielded Cambodia’s scam economy.
“These actions won’t end the scam economy overnight,” said Jacob Daniel Sims, a transnational crime expert at Harvard’s Asia Center. “But they shrink its oxygen supply and send a rare message to regimes like Cambodia’s that elite crime as a ruling strategy is a double-edged sword.”