A man who U.S. federal prosecutors said ran one of the largest criminal networks in the world, relying on thousands of enslaved workers in Southeast Asia to bilk victims out of billions of dollars, has been arrested and extradited to China, Cambodian authorities announced on Wednesday.
The man, Chen Zhi, 38, is a citizen of several countries, including China and Cambodia, though the Cambodian government said his passport has been revoked. He was arrested in Cambodia, where his company is based, and extradited to China on Tuesday, according to a news release from Cambodia’s ministry of the interior.
Mr. Chen was the founder and chairman of the Prince Group, a Cambodian holding company that seemingly focused on luxury real estate. But in reality, federal prosecutors said, he used the company to mastermind an operation in which scammers persuaded unwitting victims to fork over their money, often via cryptocurrency.
Federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York announced Mr. Chen’s indictment in October, while he was still at large, and said that they had seized Bitcoin worth about $15 billion — proceeds from his scheme, they said. One of the networks that worked with Mr. Chen, prosecutors said, targeted more than 250 victims in Brooklyn and Queens, who lost more than $18 million. Other victims were in Russia, Taiwan, Vietnam and other countries.
His extradition to China, which Cambodian authorities said followed months of cooperation between the two governments, complicates the chances that Mr. Chen will ever face justice in an American courtroom. The United States does not have an extradition agreement with China, an economic and geopolitical archrival.
A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn declined to comment. Representatives for the Cambodia’s Ministry of Information and the Chinese Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A lawyer for Mr. Chen, who also represents the Prince Group in civil litigation, did not respond to a request for comment.
The online scam industry has ballooned in recent years, with Americans losing $16 billion in such schemes in 2024, according to the F.B.I. At least $10 billion was lost to swindles originating in Southeast Asia, according to the Treasury Department.
A common element in the nefarious sector, which has targeted hundreds of thousands of people in Southeast Asia, is brutality. Criminal groups have preyed on poor migrants looking for job opportunities, trafficking them into compounds throughout the region in recent years, according to a 2024 report from the United States Institute for Peace, an independent nonprofit.
Starting in 2015, according to federal prosecutors, Mr. Chen and his associates built their operation through forced-labor camps throughout Cambodia, guarded by high walls and barbed wire. They forced workers to carry out the scams at a blistering pace: A conspirator of Mr. Chen boasted that the Prince Group made more than $30 million per day from the schemes in 2018, according to the indictment.
Typically, the scammers would reach out to victims over social media platforms and develop a relationship, building a narrative that they were selling a lucrative investment opportunity or even seeking romance. Once the money was deposited, the scammers cut off contact with their victims.
According to prosecutors, Mr. Chen kept detailed ledgers of the scams and how much money they made, labeling them as “Russian order fraud,” “Vietnamese loans” and “European and American market.”
The illegal profits from the scheme, prosecutors said, were then laundered through a variety of sophisticated networks, including the Prince Group’s businesses in online gambling and crypto. Mr. Chen and his associates used the funds to buy luxury watches, private jets and even a Picasso painting through a New York auction house.
On its website, the Prince Group says Mr. Chen had transformed the company into a “leading business group in Cambodia that adheres to international standard” that was “committed to sustainable business practices.”
Santul Nerkar is a Times reporter covering federal courts in Brooklyn.
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