Prince Group: Indictment, $15B Seizure, and Sanctions

Prince Group, formally Prince Holding Group, is a Cambodia-based multinational conglomerate founded in 2015 by Chinese-born businessman Chen Zhi, and in October 2025 it became the target of what the U.S. Department of Justice calls one of the largest criminal enforcement actions in its history. Federal prosecutors indicted Chen on wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy charges, alleging the group ran forced-labor compounds in Cambodia that generated billions of dollars in cryptocurrency fraud. Alongside the indictment, the U.S. Treasury designated Prince Group as a transnational criminal organization, and the government filed a civil forfeiture complaint against roughly 127,271 bitcoin worth about $15 billion.¹

What Prince Group Is

Prince Holding Group grew out of Chen Zhi’s investments in Sihanoukville real estate during Cambodia’s casino-driven construction boom. Chen, also known as Chen Zhijun or “Vincent,” was born in Fujian province, China, and reportedly left China for Cambodia around 2009 to avoid law enforcement. He purchased Cambodian citizenship in 2014 and founded the group a year later. He also holds citizenship in Vanuatu, Saint Lucia, and Cyprus.²³

On its public face, Prince Group is active in more than 30 countries across real estate development, financial services, and consumer services.⁴ Its visible subsidiaries include Prince Bank Plc., a licensed commercial bank in Phnom Penh; Prince Huan Yu Real Estate, a property developer; and the Jin Bei Group, a luxury hotel and casino operator. U.S. authorities allege these companies functioned as fronts to conceal and launder criminal proceeds.⁵ Prince Holding Group has “categorically rejected” the allegations as “baseless” and says it is confident Chen will be “fully exonerated.”⁶

The Forced-Labor Scam Compounds

At the center of the U.S. case is the allegation that Prince Group operated at least ten forced-labor scam compounds in Cambodia. According to the DOJ, the group trafficked hundreds of workers into the country and confined them inside facilities surrounded by high walls and barbed wire. Workers were recruited with promises of well-paid customer service or tech jobs. On arrival, their documents and electronics were taken, and they were subjected to physical abuse, isolation, and threats of sexual exploitation.¹⁵

Those workers were forced to run “pig-butchering” cryptocurrency scams. Scammers build fake relationships with targets over weeks or months, earn their trust, and then persuade them to deposit money into fraudulent investment platforms before vanishing with the funds. The operation ran at industrial scale. Court filings describe “phone farms” with thousands of handsets and millions of mobile numbers; one pair of facilities reportedly used 1,250 phones to manage 76,000 social media accounts.⁵⁷

Prosecutors say Chen personally managed the compounds, keeping ledgers that tracked profits and the schemes being run from each room. He allegedly possessed photographic evidence of torture and beatings and communicated with subordinates about the abuse of workers who “caused trouble,” in one instance instructing that victims should not be “beaten to death.”¹

The scale of victim losses is large. The U.S. government estimates Americans lost at least $10 billion to Southeast Asia-based scam operations in 2024, a 66 percent jump from the prior year, and total U.S. losses to online investment scams in recent years have exceeded $16.6 billion. A 2022 FBI investigation into just one Prince Group subsidiary, Jin Bei Group, identified 259 American victims who collectively lost $18 million.⁵

The Criminal Indictment

The federal indictment, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York as Case No. 25-CR-312 and unsealed on October 14, 2025, charges Chen Zhi with two counts: wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy. If convicted, he faces a maximum of 40 years in prison.⁸¹ The DOJ emphasizes that an indictment is an allegation and that Chen is presumed innocent unless proven guilty.

The $15 Billion Bitcoin Seizure

The civil forfeiture complaint, filed in the Eastern District of New York as Docket No. 25-CV-5745, targets approximately 127,271 bitcoin that the government alleges are proceeds and instrumentalities of the fraud and money laundering schemes. At the time of the October 2025 announcement, the cache was valued at roughly $15 billion, making it the largest forfeiture action the Justice Department has ever pursued. The bitcoin is currently held in U.S. government custody.⁹¹

The origin of the seized bitcoin is disputed. Blockchain analysis traces the coins to LuBian, a bitcoin mining operation with facilities in China and Iran that controlled nearly six percent of global bitcoin mining before disappearing in February 2021. In December 2020, 127,426 bitcoin were removed from LuBian, reportedly through an algorithmic weakness in how the company generated cryptographic keys. The DOJ alleges Prince Group used LuBian as a front to launder scam proceeds. A Prince Group spokesperson has described the U.S. seizure as “air cover for a giant cash grab,” and the Chinese government has accused the United States of orchestrating the original 2020 theft. An ICIJ investigation also identified irregularities in the government’s evidentiary filings, including two photographs offered as evidence of Prince Group violence that were traced to unrelated incidents.¹⁰

How the Money Allegedly Moved

Prosecutors describe a layered laundering system. Prince Group associates allegedly used “spraying” and “funneling” techniques, breaking large volumes of cryptocurrency into many wallet addresses before reconsolidating them to obscure the source. The organization commingled criminal proceeds with revenue from ostensibly legitimate businesses, including online gambling and a Laos-based bitcoin mining venture, Warp Data Technology Lao Sole Co., that funneled large quantities of bitcoin into wallets controlled by Chen.¹⁵

Stolen funds were ultimately held in exchange wallets, converted to traditional currency through bank accounts, or stored in unhosted wallets using private keys Chen controlled. Illicit profits were also spent on yachts, private jets, luxury watches, vacation homes, and artwork reportedly including a Picasso painting. The shell structure behind it all was vast: U.S. authorities allege Prince Group operated through more than 100 shell and holding companies across jurisdictions including Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, the British Virgin Islands, and the United Kingdom. Analysts have described the group’s heavy use of Singaporean financial institutions and family office structures as “Singapore Washing.”¹³

Sanctions and Asset Freezes

On October 14, 2025, the same day the indictment was unsealed, OFAC sanctioned 146 targets tied to Prince Group. The list covered Prince Holding Group itself, Prince Bank, Jin Bei Group, Golden Fortune Resorts World, and numerous other entities and individuals across Cambodia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Palau, and the British Virgin Islands. Key individuals designated alongside Chen included Guy Chhay, Lei Bo, Ing Dara, Zhu Zhongbiao (Jack Zhu), Alan Yeo, Sandy Zhou, Karen Chen (Chen Xiuling), and Thet Li, whom prosecutors described as the organization’s de facto illicit finance chief.⁵ OFAC expanded the designations on June 23, 2026, adding nine more individuals and 26 entities, and identifying Hu Xiaowei, arrested in Osaka, Japan, as Chen’s “second-in-command.”¹¹

The UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office imposed concurrent sanctions on October 14, 2025, freezing UK-based assets including a £12 million mansion on Avenue Road in North London, a £100 million office building on Fenchurch Street in the City of London, and 17 flats in central and south London. Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said the scam-center masterminds were “ruining the lives of vulnerable people and buying up London homes to store their money.”¹² Singapore police seized more than S$500 million (about $393 million) in assets, including a yacht, 11 cars, properties, luxury goods, and financial accounts, and arrested three Singaporean men on money laundering charges.¹³ Taiwan separately seized over T$5.5 billion (about $172 million).⁶

Cambodian Political Ties and Government Response

Chen cultivated deep ties to Cambodia’s ruling elite. In 2020 he was appointed an official adviser to then-Prime Minister Hun Sen, holding a rank equivalent to a cabinet minister, and later also served as an adviser to current Prime Minister Hun Manet. That same year the Cambodian king awarded him the title “Neak Oknha,” a nobleman designation given to citizens who donate at least $500,000 to the government, at Hun Sen’s request.¹⁴⁶ U.S. prosecutors allege Chen kept a ledger of bribes to government officials and that a multimillion-dollar watch was used to bribe a senior official for a diplomatic passport. Investigators allegedly managed scam compounds alongside the Cambodian interior minister and purchased land for other compounds from the daughter of a top army general.

Under international pressure, Cambodian authorities arrested Chen on January 6, 2026, in a joint Cambodian-Chinese operation and extradited him to China two days later. The government revoked his citizenship, saying it had been “irregularly obtained.” Officials reported shuttering 200 scam locations between July 2025 and mid-February 2026, arresting 173 “senior crime figures,” and deporting 11,000 foreign workers.¹⁵⁶ Prime Minister Hun Manet has maintained the government was unaware of Chen’s illegal activities, calling him “just a businessman.” No Cambodian politicians or officials have been investigated. Amnesty International and independent observers have noted scam sites continue to operate in areas such as Poipet, and that police and military have been absent when compounds were emptied. Cambodia’s scam industry generates an estimated $12.5 billion in annual revenue, an amount that rivals the country’s $9 billion garment manufacturing sector.¹⁴

Where Things Stand

Chen Zhi is in Chinese custody. Chinese state media says he is suspected of operating casinos, fraud, illegal business operations, and concealing criminal proceeds, and has been placed under coercive legal measures; authorities have indicated they intend to issue arrest warrants for additional members of his syndicate. No trial date has been publicly reported in China.¹⁵ The U.S. criminal indictment remains pending, and the civil forfeiture case in the Eastern District of New York has produced no public rulings on the merits, victim claims, or asset liquidations.⁹

If you believe you were a victim of the cryptocurrency fraud, the Justice Department has directed victims to contact the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center.¹ In Congress, the House Foreign Affairs Committee advanced H.R. 5490, the “Dismantle Foreign Scam Syndicates Act,” in December 2025, which would create an interagency task force to target transnational criminal organizations running foreign scam centers.¹⁶

1
U.S. Department of Justice. Chairman of Prince Group Indicted for Operating Cambodian Forced-Labor Scam Compounds
2
Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. Will Chen Zhi’s Arrest and Extradition Be a Wake-Up Call for Scam Bosses in the Mekong
3
East Asia Forum. Unravelling Prince Group’s Criminal Networks
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U.S. Embassy Thailand. Prince Group Indicted — Cambodian Scam Compounds
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U.S. Department of the Treasury. Treasury Takes Sweeping Action Against Prince Group Transnational Criminal Organization
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The Guardian. Prince Group, Chen Zhi, and Cambodia’s Scam Industry
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CNBC. DOJ Seizes $15 Billion in Bitcoin Linked to Chen Zhi Pig-Butchering Scam
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U.S. Department of Justice. Indictment, United States v. Chen Zhi, Cr. No. 25-CR-312
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U.S. Department of Justice. Chairman of Prince Group Indicted — EDNY
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ICIJ. Questions Swirl Around US Plans for Record $15B Prince Group Crypto Seizure
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U.S. Department of the Treasury. Treasury Expands Sanctions on Prince Group Transnational Criminal Organization
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UK Government. UK and US Take Joint Action to Disrupt Major Online Fraud Network
13
Singapore Police Force. Police Arrest Three Singaporeans in Money Laundering Investigation
14
Foreign Policy. Cambodia’s Scam Industry and the Prince Group Sanctions
15
BBC. Chen Zhi Extradited to China
16
House Foreign Affairs Committee. HFAC Advances Bill to Crack Down on Foreign Scam Centers