Alleged cyber scam kingpin arrested, extradited to China

Cambodian authorities on Tuesday arrested and extradited to China Chen Zhi, the head of the Prince Group conglomerate and the alleged mastermind behind a multi-billion dollar scam empire. 

Cambodia’s Ministry of Interior announced the arrests of Zhi and two others — Xu Ji Liang and Shao Ji Hui — whose relation to Prince Group is unclear. 

Zhi’s arrest is the latest chapter in the remarkable downfall of one of the country’s most prominent businesses, with holdings in the real estate, banking, entertainment and airline industries. It also marks perhaps the most significant law enforcement action to date against Southeast Asia’s sprawling scamming industry, which has erected massive compounds out of which enslaved workers carry out an assortment of online heists.  

In October, Zhi and 128 entities linked to him and Prince Group were sanctioned by the U.S. and United Kingdom, along with 17 other people accused of helping to run scamming operations.

The Department of Justice, which also indicted Zhi, seized a record $15 billion worth of bitcoin held in 25 of Zhi’s accounts, and the U.K. confiscated dozens of properties in London allegedly connected to the group, including a £100 million office building and a £12 million mansion. Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong have also carried out their own seizures of Prince Group-linked properties. 

Born in Fujian province in southeastern China, Zhi rose in the world of Cambodian business seemingly out of nowhere, buoyed by the country’s real estate boom in the early 2010s. He started a bank, an airline and his company helped build several malls in Phnom Penh. He reportedly became a Cambodian citizen in 2014, which required an investment in the country of more than $250,000, and was given the title of “Neak Oknha” by Cambodia’s king in 2020 — an honorific requiring a $500,000 donation to the government.

He was also allegedly a key player in the country’s booming criminal underworld. 

According to the U.S. Treasury, Prince Group has profited from illegal online gambling, sextortion, money laundering “and the industrial-scale trafficking, torture, and extortion of enslaved workers in furtherance of the operation of at least ten scam compounds in Cambodia.” In a statement in November, the company said it “categorically rejects” the accusations and decried the “unlawful seizure of assets worth billions of dollars.”

Jacob Sims, an expert on transnational crime and visiting fellow at Harvard University’s Asia Center, said the arrest of Zhi was “the best among bad options” — rather than a sign of reform — for Cambodia, which has historically chosen not to go after high-level players in the scamming industry. 

The extradition to China, meanwhile, ensures the details of “broader elite complicity” will not be aired in a U.S. courtroom. 

“From Beijing’s perspective, securing Chen before Western prosecutors could move reduces reputational risk and allows the case to be managed within China’s own legal and political framework,” Sims said.