In 2018, an lavish celebration banquet was underway at a luxurious villa on the Mekong River in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Shark fin soup, worth hundreds of dollars, steamed on the table. Thai actor Sakharyak Bosankit, looking at the pale, goateed man at the head of the table, felt a fleeting resemblance to a real-life "Godfather." This man was Chen Zhi, a prominent figure in Cambodian business thanks to his Prince Group. He was celebrating the success of his investment in "The Prey," Cambodia's first Hollywood-style action film. No one could have imagined that this seemingly prosperous "business tycoon" harbored a multinational, blood-stained fraud empire. Rise to Fame: From Fujian Internet Cafe Owner to Cambodian Duke Chen Zhi was born in Fujian in 1987. According to his Singapore-based fund company, he was a "business prodigy," helping his family run their Shenzhen business at the age of three. As an adult, he even opened a small internet cafe in Fujian. But it was a trip to Cambodia in 2011 that truly changed his fate. At the time, Cambodia's real estate market was still a burgeoning market, and Chen Zhi, driven by ambition, entered the market and founded his first real estate company. Four years later, the Prince Group was officially established. This name would later become a ubiquitous Cambodian brand, and also the beginning of countless nightmares. Gaining a foothold in a foreign country requires more than business alone. In 2014, Chen Zhi spent $250,000 to become a Cambodian naturalized citizen, securing what locals consider a "privileged pass." More crucially, he is a master of the art of political-business collusion: in 2017, a royal decree appointed him advisor to the Ministry of Interior, equivalent to the rank of Deputy Secretary of State. He subsequently served as an advisor to then-Prime Minister Hun Sen and now-Prime Minister Hun Manet, even accompanying Hun Sen on visits to Cuba and representing the Cambodian government in aiding Laos. In 2020, Chen Zhi was awarded the title of "Duke," and photos of him standing shoulder to shoulder with Hun Sen went viral in Cambodia. He was no longer just another businessman from Fujian, but a rising Cambodian elite with political and business connections and a multi-billionaire fortune.
Crime: A fraud kingdom stained with blood and tears
In the Golden Luck Technology Park on the southeastern border of Cambodia, the tops of 10-foot-high concrete walls are wrapped with barbed wire
and the windows of the five-story dormitory buildings are equipped with metal railings. This is nominally an industrial park, but in reality it is a "prison" for defrauding workers. Local resident Pan Ha has witnessed the fate of those who escape: "The security guards would beat them nearly to death before dragging them back. My brother, the security supervisor, said if they didn't beat them, no one would be afraid, and more people would flee." Within the industrial park, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Malaysians were forced to work 12-hour days, operating "pig-killing" scams. Those who disobeyed or performed poorly were locked up on Building B1 and beaten and electrocuted. Female workers were also forced into prostitution and pornographic videos. Even more brutal was the "ransom system": if the victim's family didn't pay the required amount, the industrial park would send them videos of the torture. Residents witnessed security guards running over escapees with cars and shocking them with electric cattle prods. Former security guards revealed that escapees, once recaptured, were sold to other industrial parks, and a $50 reward was offered for reporting escapees. The crimes of the Prince Group go far beyond this: Chinese court documents show that from 2016 to 2022, the Prince Group profited over 5 billion RMB from illegal gambling. To circumvent China's capital controls, they recruited hundreds of "money mules" to transfer gambling funds across borders using bank cards. The United Nations estimates that many of Cambodia's approximately 100,000 enslaved people are linked to the Prince Group. However, Chen Zhi relied on his connections with high-level Cambodian officials to conceal these crimes for a long time - he was an advisor to Hun Sen and Hun Manet, and the group's executives partnered with former Interior Minister Sao Khen to do business, and local police were even hired as security guards in the park. Disguise: Covering evil with "good deeds" Chen Zhi knows how to create a "positive image." He invested in the film "Prey," which tells the story of a Chinese detective going undercover in Cambodia to combat cybercrime. However, in reality, his group was identified by a Chinese court as a "notorious transnational online gambling criminal gang." He is also keen on "charity": he donated money to the local community, founded the "Chen Zhi Scholarship" to support Cambodian students, and even built shopping malls, supermarkets, and banks in Sihanoukville, turning this dilapidated seaside town into a "new Macau." These actions earned him the reputation of a "hero of Cambodia's development," but the funds supporting these "good deeds" came from the devastation of countless families: Ms. Li from Shandong, whose father committed suicide by drinking pesticide after being defrauded of his 800,000 yuan pension; a Zhejiang netizen who was swindled out of 820,000 yuan in savings by a "perfect boyfriend"; and university students racking up massive debts from virtual currency scams... The instigator, Chen Zhi, wears the "Duke" medal bestowed by the King of Cambodia, keeps a pet white tiger in his Phnom Penh mansion, and wears a golden chain on his private jet. This 37-year-old native of Lianjiang, Fujian, built his empire with the blood and tears of his compatriots. Collapse: 15 Billion Bitcoin Seized, Multinational Manhunt In October 2025, Chen Zhi's empire came to an end. The US Department of Justice indicted him, accusing him of operating a forced labor scam and defrauding victims worldwide of billions of dollars through "pig-killing" schemes. Approximately 127,000 Bitcoins (worth $15 billion) were seized—the largest asset forfeiture operation in the DOJ's history. Almost simultaneously, the US Treasury Department designated the Prince Group a "transnational organized crime group" and sanctioned 146 related targets. The UK also imposed sanctions on Chen Zhi and his core members. By then, Chen Zhi had already transferred his assets to 31 countries worldwide. He owned a $114 million office building in London's financial district, an $8 million mansion in Los Angeles, a $24 million yacht, the "Nonni II," and even a 25% stake in Cuba's state-owned cigar company. But no amount of wealth could mask his crimes. Chen Zhi is currently on the run, but his empire has crumbled: the Jinyun Industrial Park has been exposed, and the shell companies and money laundering network of the Prince Group have been dismantled one by one. The Cambodian executives who once protected him have been embarrassed by the scandal, and dozens of fraud parks in Phnom Penh, Sihanoukville, and other places have been shut down.
The dark side of money laundering: Cryptocurrency becomes a "criminal assembly line"
Chen Zhi's fraud network reaped tens of millions of dollars in stolen money every day, and cryptocurrency was the core tool for laundering.
Fund collection:Victims injected funds through fake investment platforms, which first flowed into financial accounts represented by Huione Group - this institution, identified by the US FinCEN as a core money laundering chain, processed at least US$4 billion in illegal funds between 2021 and 2025;
Mining laundering:Funds were then redirected into the Huione Group, which was actually controlled by Chen Zhi. The "Lubian Mining Pool" (which once controlled 6% of the global Bitcoin computing power) converted illicit funds into newly minted Bitcoin through mining, attempting to sever the connection between the funds and criminal activity. Chen Zhi boasted to others that his mining operations were "cost-free," but in reality, the funds for purchasing mining equipment and electricity bills came entirely from the victims of the scam. US law enforcement was ultimately able to seize approximately 127,000 Bitcoins (valued at $15 billion) thanks to a key vulnerability in the Lubian Mining Pool's private key security. There are currently two theories regarding the seizure: Theory One: The private keys were obtained by controlling key personnel. Through international collaboration, the US Department of Justice apprehended the core technical personnel responsible for managing the private keys of the Lubian mining pool, directly obtaining the private keys of key accounts and, in turn, controlling the corresponding Bitcoin assets. Theory Two: Exploiting a weak random number vulnerability. The security of Bitcoin accounts relies on randomly generated private keys. The Lubian mining pool used "weak random numbers" to generate private keys—these aren't completely random, but rather contain traceable algorithmic flaws. Through algorithmic simulations and extensive data crunching, law enforcement successfully "reverse-engineered" the private keys of some accounts, ultimately enabling the freezing and confiscation of the assets. While the community currently favors the second theory, the US government has yet to release specific details, so the precise reason for the asset seizure remains to be determined until more detailed information is released. This incident exposed the shortcomings of Chen Zhi's criminal group in technical security—even though they had built a complex money laundering chain, the lack of basic security measures ultimately led to the loss of tens of billions of yuan in assets. The collapse of Chen Zhi's empire and the confiscation of 15 billion bitcoins serve as a wake-up call for us.
1. Technical security: Basic security is the bottom line
As a one-stop blockchain security service provider, BlockSec can provide in-depth support for security audit services - covering smart contract audit (supporting multiple languages such as Solidity, Rust, Go) and EVM chain audit, conducting comprehensive reviews from multiple dimensions including technology, business, and finance. It can not only accurately identify potential security vulnerabilities such as key systems and algorithmic logic, but also output professional audit reports containing executable solutions, helping project parties avoid security risks in advance and safeguarding the technical security of Web3 projects.
2. Compliance construction: Blockchain is not a "lawless place"
Project parties should cooperate with the implementation of on-chain supervision technology and balance "anonymity and traceability" within the compliance framework;
The industry needs to establish a cross-platform address blacklist sharing mechanism to promptly mark risky addresses involved in fraud and terrorism.
Alex
Miyuki
Weiliang