At just 37 years old, Chen Zhi is accused of being “the mastermind behind a sprawling cyber fraud empire… a criminal enterprise built on human suffering.”

With his sparse beard and boyish features, he looks younger than he is. And without a doubt, he has become extremely wealthy in a very short time.

Last week, the US Department of Justice accused him of running fraudulent companies in Cambodia that stole billions of dollars in cryptocurrency from victims around the world.

The US Treasury Department seized nearly $14 billion in bitcoins that it claims are linked to him; He claimed it was the largest cryptocurrency seizure in history.

His own company, the Cambodian Prince Group, describes him on its website as “a respected businessman and renowned philanthropist” whose “vision and leadership have transformed Prince Group into a leading business group in Cambodia that meets international standards.”

The BBC contacted Prince Group for comment.

But how much do we know about Chen Zhi, the mysterious figure who allegedly runs a scam empire?

A surprising rise

Raised in Fujian province in southeastern China, he started with a small, apparently unsuccessful, online gaming company and moved to Cambodia in late 2010 or 2011, where he began working in the then-booming real estate sector.

His arrival coincided with the start of a speculative real estate boom in Cambodia.

This was fueled by the availability of large tracts of land.

expropriated by powerful figures with political connections and by a flood of Chinese capital.

Part of that came from the final phase of Xi Jinping's Belt and Road Initiative to export Chinese-made infrastructure,and another segment of individual Chinese investors seeking more affordable alternatives to the overheated Chinese real estate market.

The number of Chinese tourists visiting Cambodia was also increasing rapidly.

The skyline of the capital, Phnom Penh, changed dramatically. The characteristic low-rise cityscape, with its mustard-colored French colonial mansions, was transformed into another Asian forest of glass and steel towers.

The transformation of Sihanoukville, a small, quiet seaside resort, was even more extreme.

It wasn't just Chinese tourists and real estate speculators heading there, but also gamblers, since gambling is illegal in China.

New casinos sprang up, along with ostentatious luxury hotels and apartment blocks. There was a lot of money to be made.

Even so, Chen Zhi's trajectory was surprising.

In 2014, he became a Cambodian citizen, renouncing his Chinese nationality.

This allowed him to buy land in his name, but required a minimum investment or a donation to the government of US$250,000.

It was never known where Chen Zhi's money came from. When applying for a bank account on the Isle of Man in 2019, he mentioned an unnamed uncle who, he claimed, had given him US$2 million to start his first real estate company in 2011, but no proof of this was ever provided.

Chen Zhi founded Prince Group in 2015, focused on real estate development, when he was only 27 years old.

In 2018, he obtained a commercial banking license to found Prince Bank. That same year, he obtained a Cypriot passport in exchange for a minimum investment of US$2.5 million, which facilitated his access to the European Union. Later, he also acquired Vanuatuan citizenship. He founded Cambodia's third airline and, in 2020, obtained certification to operate a fourth. In Phnom Penh, Prince's real estate division built luxury shopping malls, five-star hotels in Sihanoukville, and developed an ambitious project to build a US$16 billion "eco-city" there called "Bay of Lights." In 2020, Chen Zhi received the highest title bestowed by the King of Cambodia, that of "Neak Oknha," which requires a donation of at least US$500,000 to the government. He had already been appointed official advisor to the Minister of the Interior, Sar Kheng, since 2017 and was a business partner of his son, Sar Sokha, and an official advisor to Cambodia's most powerful man, Hun Sen, and later to his son, Hun Manet, after he succeeded his father as Prime Minister in 2023. Chen Zhi was praised in local media as a philanthropist.having funded scholarships for low-income students and made significant donations to help Cambodia cope with the Covid-19 pandemic.

However, he remained an enigmatic figure, staying out of the public eye and making few statements.

“Everyone I’ve spoken to who has worked with him directly, who has been in the same room, describes him as very courteous, very calm, very measured,” says Jack Adamovic Davies, a journalist who conducted a three-year investigation into Chen Zhi, published by Radio Free Asia last year.

“I think he was smart not to be the kind of flamboyant person about whom sensationalist stories would be written. Even those who no longer want to be associated with him are still impressed by his understated charisma, his seriousness.”

But where did all this wealth and power come from?

“A litany of transnational crimes”

In In 2019, the real estate bubble burst in Sihanoukville. The online gambling business attracted Chinese criminal organizations, which started violent turf wars among themselves. Tourists were driven away. Under pressure from China, then-Premier Hun Sen banned online gambling in August of that year. Around 450,000 Chinese left the city after the collapse of its main industry. Many of Prince Group's residential blocks remained empty. However, Chen Zhi continued to expand his businesses and spend lavishly. According to British authorities, in 2019 he bought a $16 million mansion in North London and a $126 million office block in the city's financial district. The United States says he and his associates bought properties in New York, private jets and superyachts, and a Picasso painting. And, they allege, Chen Zhi's wealth came from what is currently Asia's most lucrative business: online fraud, human trafficking, and the accompanying money laundering. The United States and the United Kingdom imposed sanctions on 128 companies linked to Chen Zhi and Prince Group, and on 17 individuals of seven different nationalities who they allege helped run his fraudulent empire. ,

Assets linked to Chen Zhi in the United States and the United Kingdom were frozen.

The sanctions announcement describes a complex network of shell companies and cryptocurrency wallets through which money was moved to conceal its origin.

It states: “The transnational criminal organization Prince Group profits from a long list of transnational crimes,including sextortion (a type of fraud that involves soliciting sexually explicit material, often of minors, for later blackmail), money laundering, various frauds and extortions, corruption, illegal online gambling and trafficking, torture, and industrial-scale extortion of enslaved workers, to fuel the operation of at least 10 scam complexes in Cambodia.”

The “Scam Empire”

China has also been quietly investigating the Prince Group since at least 2020. Several court cases have been filed accusing the company of running internet fraud schemes.

The Beijing Municipal Bureau of Public Security created a task force “to investigate the Prince Group, a major transnational internet gambling syndicate based in Cambodia.”

At the heart of its operations, according to the United States and the United Kingdom, were businesses such as the Golden Fortune Science and Technology Park, a complex built by the Prince Group in Chrey Thom, near the border with Vietnam.

In the past, the Prince Group has denied any involvement in scams and stated that it no longer has any connection with Golden Fortune, but the US and UK investigation argues that a clear business link still exists between them.

Adamovic Davies interviewed several people who lived and worked near Golden Fortune for his investigation into Chen Zhi.

They described brutal beatings of those, mainly Chinese, Vietnamese, and Malaysians, who tried to escape the compound, where they were forced to run online scams.