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The chairman of Cambodian conglomerate Prince Group was charged Tuesday by the U.S. with running a “sprawling cyber fraud empire” that led to the seizure of bitcoin worth about $15 billion in what prosecutors called the largest ever forfeiture action.
Chen Zhi, 38, who heads Phnom Penh-based Prince Group, was charged by federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, New York, with engaging in a wire-fraud conspiracy and operating a money-laundering scheme. Chen’s operation allegedly used forced-labor in Cambodia to emotionally manipulate thousands of victims in the U.S. and around the world, fattening their accounts and then draining them in a practice known as “pig butchering.”
Such scams likely stole more than $75 billion from victims globally between January 2020 and February 2024, according to a study by a University of Texas at Austin finance professor last year. According to the FBI, cryptocurrency investment fraud caused more than $5.8 billion in reported losses in 2024 alone.
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