The arrest of Chen Zhi, a billionaire allegedly behind a massive scam network, renews interest in stopping the online scam operations in Southeast Asia.
Cybercrime has become an increasingly widespread problem. A survey by PEW Research Center found that nearly three-quarters of Americans have experienced an online scam or attack (73%). In 2024, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) counted up a staggering $16.6 billion in losses from over 859,000 complaints. A concerning portion of these cyber frauds originates from Transnational Criminal Organizations (TCOs) based in Southeast Asia. A US government estimate says “Americans lost at least $10 billion to Southeast Asia-based scam operations in 2024, a 66 percent increase over the prior year, with scams like those perpetrated by Prince Group TCO being particularly significant.”
In October 2025, the United States’ Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) worked with the United Kingdom's Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office (FCDO) to deliver the “largest action ever targeting cybercriminal networks in Southeast Asia”, specifically hitting 146 targets in the Prince Group Transnational Criminal Organization. Sanctions were also imposed on Huoine Group, Prince Holding Group, Chen Zhi, and Zhi’s associates.
Huoine Group, a financial services conglomerate, has a history of money laundering for North Korean cyber heists and TCOs in Southeast Asia. The Group laundered at least $36 million from virtual currency investment “pig butchering” scams, and $300 million of virtual currency from other cyberscams. Prince Holding Group, based in Cambodia, was run by billionaire Chen Zhi and his associates, and is accused of several transnational crimes, “including the construction, operation, and management of scam compounds reliant on human trafficking and modern-day slavery where industrial scale cyberfraud operations target victims around the world, including U.S. citizens.”
Chen Zhi, a Chinese emigre, owns a business empire in Cambodia that has both illegal and legitimate business ventures in a complex network of more than 100 shell and holding companies globally. Zhi’s scam compounds earn money through even more crimes, like sextortion, money laundering, illegal online gambling, and “the industrial-scale trafficking, torture, and extortion of enslaved workers in furtherance of the operation of at least ten scam compounds in Cambodia.”
These workers are lured to the compounds with the promise of receiving a well-paying job, but are instead forced to operate “pig butchering” cyber fraud operations. The scammers build relationships, possibly romantic in nature, with victims over extended periods of time (“fattening the pig”) and then convince the victims to put their money in fraudulent investment sites that disappear after as much money as possible has been extorted from the victim (the “butchering”). In many cases, but not all, these scammers are also victims of human trafficking, and are forced to work through “physical abuse, isolation, restriction of movement, arbitrary fines and fees, threats of sexual exploitation, and the confiscation of personal documents and electronics.”
The death of one such worker, a South Korean college student whose body was found with injuries suggesting he was tortured and beaten to death, incited public outrage that has led to repatriation efforts in the global fight against these scam networks. South Korea has taken back 107 nationals working in Cambodian operations, though at least 1,000 South Korean workers in these scam operations, in and around Cambodia, remain, voluntarily or involuntarily.
Efforts to move scam workers are also occurring internally. Myanmar cracked down on local scam centers in December 2025 and detained thousands of foreign nationals. While they were able to deport most of them, the leader of the crackdown, Col. Min Thu Kyaw has requested that the international community take their detainees home, with the largest groups awaiting repatriation being Chinese, Indonesian, Ethiopian, Vietnamese, Kenyan and Indian nationals.
Last week, on January 8th, 2026, Cambodia extradited Chen Zhi along with two of his associates to China, stirring up more conversations about what it will take to stop these scam networks. The BBC notes that some estimates suggest “scam businesses may account for around half of the entire Cambodian economy.” There are hundreds of thousands of people forced to work in these operations in Myanmar and Cambodia, and these laborers are now being recruited from at least 56 countries, a contrast to the mostly Chinese workforce of the early operations. There are so many compounds that taking one down isn’t enough to destabilize a network. Laundering also makes tracking illicit transactions difficult.
So far, one possible solution has emerged - coordinated international efforts. Jason Tower, an expert at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime said that investigators should share more financial data and information that they gather from rescued scammers. Considering how these operations are largely worldwide (recruiting from 56 countries, targeting victims in the US, UK, and China), international cooperation is likely the fastest way to disrupt cyber fraud. Collaboration between the US and the UK, for example, was needed to sanction Chen Zhi and Prince Holding Group. As it is, though, Mr.Tower shared that investigators may be moving too slowly to stop these operations, which are too lucrative to stop on their own. The extradition of Chen Zhi is just one win in a much bigger war.