Why Cambodia Handed Over a Man Accused of Stealing Billions in Crypto Scam

Experts say the scam industry has become a pillar of Cambodia’s economy, but it is under pressure from other countries to crack down.A building in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, listed on the website of Prince Holding Group as its headquarters, on Thursday. The company has been accused by U.S. prosecutors of operating cyberscams.Credit...Associated PressJan. 8, 2026, 12:43 p.m. ETFor years, Chen Zhi, a man accused of running scamming operations from Cambodia, appeared untouchable.Mr. Chen, 38, was naturalized as a Cambodian citizen in 2014 after he left his native China and paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to get citizenship. He became an adviser to Cambodia’s prime minister and was given the title of lord. Mr. Chen’s company, Prince Group, was hit with sanctions in October by the United States and Britain, but the Cambodian government said only that it hoped these other countries had “sufficient proof.”But on Wednesday, the Cambodian government announced that it had extradited Mr. Chen to China in response to a request from Beijing. It is a sign, experts say, that Cambodia is starting to yield to pressure from China, its main regional ally, to take action against the cyberscam industry. But a wider crackdown is unlikely.On Thursday, Chinese state television showed police officers escorting a hooded and handcuffed Mr. Chen out of a plane. In a statement, China’s Ministry of Public Security called the arrest “another great achievement under China-Cambodia law enforcement cooperation.”For years, Cambodia has tried to deflect criticism, from other governments and from human rights groups, that it was shielding cyberscammers operating in the country. Mr. Chen’s extradition shows that it is under growing pressure, experts say. But they caution that Cambodia’s cyberscam industry, which has become a pillar of its economy, is resilient.“Given that the vast majority of what we know about the region’s scam economy has come from independent journalists, and government action has appeared mostly reactive to that, I’d say we are a long way off from anyone being in a comparably risky situation to Chen Zhi,” said Jacob Sims, a visiting fellow at Harvard University’s Asia Center and an expert on transnational crime.Still, experts say the extradition could have ripple effects, pushing the scam industry to seek refuge in other places.At least 100,000 people are forcibly involved in online scams in Cambodia, according to the United Nations. Scam operations based in Southeast Asia, including Cambodia, stole at least $10 billion from victims in the United States last year, the Treasury Department said.Cambodia said the extradition of Mr. Chen, along with two other Chinese nationals, followed months of cooperation between Cambodia and China.The extradition followed an indictment that was filed against Mr. Chen in October by the U.S. Justice Department on charges of wire fraud and money laundering conspiracy. U.S. federal prosecutors also seized $15 billion in cryptocurrency that they said were proceeds from his schemes.According to U.S. prosecutors, Mr. Chen’s Prince Group built and operated at least ten compounds in Cambodia that functioned as forced-labor camps, where workers were coerced, often under threat of violence, to commit cyberfraud. Mr. Chen’s lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.The Prince Group has denied that Mr. Chen was involved in any unlawful activity. The U.S. indictment also said that Prince Group executives boasted of connections to Chinese officials. Mr. Chen delegated an associate to contact officials from China’s Ministry of Public Security “to mitigate legal threats,” according to the indictment.In May 2023, the associate communicated with one of those officials, who promised to get Prince Group associates “off the hook” regarding legal trouble, the indictment says. In July 2023, the associate instructed a Chinese law enforcement official to use local police to extort other businesses on Prince Group’s behalf.China’s Ministry of Public Security could not be reached for comment.Experts say the alleged links between Chinese officials and Mr. Chen may have pushed China to move against him.“The last thing the Chinese want is for Chen Zhi to end up in U.S. custody,” said Jason Tower, a senior expert at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.Cambodia is heavily reliant on China, which is its largest foreign investor, primary arms supplier, and a big funder of infrastructure projects.From 2020 to 2025, there were at least 13 criminal cases in China involving the Prince Group, according to Chinese criminal court judgments. In May 2020, the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau established a special task force to investigate the company, which it described as a “giant cross-border online gambling criminal syndicate.”But that led only to the convictions of lower-ranking Chinese officials. For years, Mr. Chen went untouched.He owned one of Cambodia’s largest conglomerates, with interests spanning real estate, banking, finance, and tourism. He founded Prince Bank, which has 36 branches nationwide. It was ordered into liquidation by the National Bank of Cambodia on Thursday.Cambodia does not have extradition treaties with many countries, such as the United States and the United Kingdom, where people are targeted by scams. Other countries have started pressuring Cambodia to act.In October, South Korean officials said that they were trying to bring back missing South Koreans who they said had been trafficked into scam centers in Cambodia. In December, Thailand launched a bombing campaign against Cambodia’s scam compounds.Selam Gebrekidan and Joy Dong contributed reporting from Hong Kong, Siyi Zhao and Vivian Wang from Beijing, and Sun Narin from Phnom Penh in Cambodia.Sui-Lee Wee is the Southeast Asia bureau chief for The Times, overseeing coverage of 11 countries in the region.SKIP