One activity can hide another. Prince Group, a Cambodian conglomerate, claimed to focus its business on legitimate real estate and financial services. But US prosecutors discovered a completely different reality. Chen Zhi, the group’s president, and several executives effectively transformed the company into “one of the largest transnational criminal organizations in Asia.”
As Bloomberg reports, Chen Zhi was charged on Tuesday, October 14, with running a “vast cyber fraud empire,” based on romance scams and human trafficking. The American justice system has thus seized 127,271 Bitcoins, the equivalent of 15 billion dollars (12.8 billion euros), within the framework of this (very) large-scale scam. It is the largest seizure ever made, according to prosecutors.
“Prisons” for scammers
To do so, Chen Zhi allegedly used forced laborers, held against their will in scam centers in Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar, to extort thousands of victims in the United States. The latter would have been forced to emotionally manipulate these victims to the point of convincing them to make false investments for the benefit of the author. This is what we call a “pig slaughter” scam.
All of these officers were working under duress after initially being lured by the false promise of paid employment. Their task: to defraud Internet users “on an industrial scale” through fake romances.
According to US prosecutors, who obtained several documents, including photographs, around thirty workers were restrained and handcuffed in cyber fraud centers. They were confined in “prison-like complexes,” he continues. The workers were housed in large dormitories surrounded by high walls and barbed wire, guarded by armed men. They were beaten or sold to other venues if they refused to scam other victims.
30 million dollars a day
In total, Prince Group facilities used 1,250 mobile phones controlling 76,000 social media accounts. The workers were forced, through these profiles, to establish relationships with Internet users. They posed as women using photographs of “not too beautiful” women to make the ruse believable.
They strike up conversations with people on social media and spend months messaging them. They often feigned romantic interest to better allay their victims’ suspicions. And, above all, encourage them to invest large sums in fake investment funds.
The Prince Group’s extensive network of companies was then used to launder this money. This fraud would have generated more than $30 million a day in 2018, according to an accomplice. For now, Chen Zhi remains at large.
According to a study last year by a finance professor at the University of Texas at Austin, hog slaughter scams stole more than $75 billion from victims worldwide between January 2020 and February 2024. According to the FBI, cryptocurrency investment fraud caused more than $5.8 billion in reported losses. only for the year 2024.
Source: BFM TV
