Businessman extradited from Cambodia to China suspected of running vast online criminal empire

BANGKOK (AP) — Chen Zhi boasted of pulling in $30 million a day, prosecutors in the United States said — a suspected criminal mastermind and onetime internet cafe manager who authorities say presented himself as a legitimate businessman.

But in reality, they say, he ran online gambling sites, scams and other illegal businesses from a sprawling headquarters along the Cambodian coast.

On Thursday, Chen was in custody in China, at the center of what authorities at the Chinese Ministry of Public Security said was a “major achievement” in law enforcement cooperation between them and the Cambodian government. The ministry said that Chen was in its custody and that it soon would issue arrest warrants for key players in his network.

Chinese police marched Chen from a China Southern flight with a cloth cover on his head and his hands chained. They pulled off the black cloth, showing his clean-shaven face after he reached the ground, in a video shared by China's Ministry of Public Security's criminal investigations division.

Chen was the founder of Prince Holding Group, according to an indictment from U.S. prosecutors. Experts in transnational crime had called him one of the biggest operators of online scamming in Cambodia. He has publicly denied any allegations of wrongdoing.

Respected in Cambodian society

Publicly, Chen Zhi was a respected businessman in Cambodia.

He had built up “at least a facade of legitimate businesses that are well connected to the government,” said Mark Taylor, who formerly worked on human trafficking issues in Cambodia for the nonprofit Winrock International.

Much of the public connection was in the realm of philanthropy — in particular creating a charity known as the Prince Foundation. During the pandemic, Chen donated $3 million to Cambodia to help purchase COVID-19 vaccines.

“I would like to express my deepest appreciation for your kindness,” then Prime Minister Hun Sen wrote, according to a published letter in the Khmer Times. "May Buddha bless you, your family and your colleagues with the five fortunes!"

Chen held the title of personal adviser to Prime Minister Hun Manet and his father, Hun Sen. Chen also had the honorary title of “neak oknha," a moniker reserved for a select few in the country.

Chen had also sponsored scholarships, working with the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports in a $2 million scholarship program. More uniquely, he's also the founder of Prince Horology, where students on scholarships are taught the art of Swiss-style watchmaking, a benchmark for luxury watches.

On the radar for a while

Chen comes from a county called Lianjiang in southeastern China's Fujian province, according to Jiemian, a Chinese state media outlet. He had previously worked managing an internet cafe when he was starting out.

His rise in Cambodia was meteoric. Chen had said that he started with a loan from an uncle in the real estate business. He founded Prince Group in 2015, and the group built up Sihanoukville from a sleepy Cambodian beach town into a larger community that came to be known as a gambling and scam hub, according to Radio Free Asia.

But Chen's Prince Group has long been on the radar of authorities both in the U.S. and in China for their alleged illegal activities.

Court documents in China show Prince Group is mentioned in at least a dozen judgments, mostly concerned with money laundering and online gambling. Gambling is outlawed in mainland China and allowed only in Macau, a special administrative region.

Prosecutors in the western Chinese province of Sichuan sentenced 45 people to jail in a case for setting up illegal online gambling, where they said Chen had worked with Prince Group to set up an online gambling business targeting Chinese nationals as early as 2016. The group set up subsidiary companies in Cambodia's Sihanoukville, Phnom Penh and Chrey Thum, according to the statement from Wangcang County court.

There are also trace mentions of Prince Group's links to digital scams. In a major case prosecuted in 2020, police in Anhui province busted a fraud cause involving about 30 million Chinese yuan ($4.3 million) traced to scam compounds operating in Cambodia.

According to the court judgment, one man involved in the case had been hired as a security guard for a scam building located in Phnom Penh. Before starting their jobs, they went to register themselves at the Prince Holding Group office, he told the court.

In the United States, federal prosecutors in October unsealed an indictment against Chen for defrauding Americans and victims across the world of billions. By this time, he held passports from China, Cambodia, Vanuatu, Cyprus and St. Lucia, according to the indictment.

Chen also personally managed the scam compounds and maintained records that tracked the profits from “pig butchering” scams, the Chinese term for the illegal practice, the prosecutors said.

It was unclear if U.S. authorities knew about, or had any say in, Chen's extradition to China.