From Riches to Ruin: How Chen Zhi Built Cambodia's Secret Criminal Empire

Chen Zhi, a 37-year-old Chinese-born businessman, once seemed to have it all. As founder and chairman of Prince Holding Group, he commanded a business empire spanning real estate, banking, and finance across Southeast Asia. Yet behind his glittering facade of legitimacy lay one of Asia’s most sophisticated fraud networks. In a stunning reversal of fortune, Chen Zhi now faces American and British sanctions, with the U.S. Department of Justice having seized over $15 billion worth of Bitcoin—marking what prosecutors call “one of the largest financial frauds in history.”

The question isn’t just who Chen Zhi is, but how a man once honored by Cambodia’s elite orchestrated crimes affecting thousands globally. His story reveals the dangerous intersection of wealth, political protection, and transnational criminal enterprise.

From Internet Cafe to Real Estate Fortune

Chen Zhi was born in Fujian Province, China, in December 1987. His early business ventures in China were modest—he ran an internet cafe and assisted with family businesses, hardly the pedigree of a future billionaire. The transformation began around 2011 when he relocated to Cambodia to capitalize on the country’s economic opening and booming real estate sector.

The timing proved fortuitous. Cambodia was attracting massive Chinese investment and experiencing rapid urbanization. Chen Zhi seized this opportunity with ruthless efficiency. In 2015, he founded Prince Holding Group, which he rapidly scaled into one of Cambodia’s largest conglomerates. His real estate developments reshaped Cambodian cities—most dramatically in Sihanoukville, where his investments helped transform the sleepy coastal town into a thriving metropolitan center, generating hundreds of millions in wealth.

By 2018, Chen Zhi had expanded into finance, securing a banking license and establishing Prince Bank. His diversification strategy proved effective: the Prince Group eventually operated across real estate, financial services, consumer products, and more, with claimed operations spanning over 30 countries. The group’s real estate portfolio alone represented $2 billion in Cambodian investments, anchored by landmark projects like Prince Plaza Shopping Center. Within barely a decade, Chen Zhi had transformed himself from an unknown entrepreneur into a Cambodian business magnate.

The Façade Cracks: A Criminal Operation Masquerading as Commerce

What regulators uncovered shattered this carefully constructed image. Behind Prince Group’s legitimate business activities lay an industrial-scale transnational fraud network that the U.S. government would characterize as “built on human suffering.”

The scheme operated through what authorities call “pig-killing” fraud—confidence schemes targeting victims globally, with devastating impact on American victims. To execute this fraud, Chen Zhi’s organization established at least 10 major fraud operations across Cambodia, resembling what investigators describe as “high-tech fraud factories.” These operations employed hundreds of thousands of phones and computers running tens of thousands of fake social media accounts simultaneously.

The human cost was staggering. The group trafficked migrant workers from various countries into these compounds, holding them in prison-like conditions. Workers faced threats of violence and torture if they refused to participate in the fraud. Within these industrial parks, captive laborers had no choice but to perpetrate the schemes around the clock. As U.S. Assistant Attorney General John Eisberg stated, this criminal apparatus was fundamentally “an enterprise built on human suffering.”

To obscure the proceeds, Chen Zhi’s operation employed sophisticated money laundering techniques. Illicit funds flowed through online gambling platforms and cryptocurrency mining operations. The group also established shell companies in offshore financial centers like the British Virgin Islands, reinvesting the proceeds into overseas real estate—a strategy designed to obscure the criminal origins of the wealth. This last detail would prove ironically consequential when American authorities later traced and seized billions in cryptocurrency from the operation.

Political Patronage: The Rise of Cambodia’s “Duke”

Chen Zhi’s criminal enterprises might never have flourished so openly without crucial political protection. After obtaining Cambodian citizenship, he systematically cultivated relationships with the country’s elite.

In 2017, he was appointed as an advisor to Cambodia’s Ministry of Interior, receiving a rank equivalent to senior government officials. His influence quickly expanded—he became a personal advisor to then-Prime Minister Hun Sen, wielding direct influence over Cambodia’s most powerful figure. This relationship proved durable: even after Hun Sen’s 2023 departure and his son Hun Manet’s succession as Prime Minister, Chen Zhi reportedly retained his advisory status with the new administration.

The government lavishly rewarded this alignment. In July 2020, Chen Zhi received Cambodia’s highest civilian honor: the title of “Duke,” personally awarded by Prime Minister Hun Sen himself. This distinction places Chen Zhi among Cambodia’s most honored foreign-born civilians, a symbolic elevation that cemented his status in both business and political circles. He was no longer merely a wealthy businessman—he was Duke Chen Zhi, a figure revered in Cambodia’s power centers, regularly attending elite gatherings and moving within Cambodia’s innermost circles of influence.

The Collapse: International Pressure Meets Cambodian Ambiguity

The American and British governments simultaneously moved against Chen Zhi and his empire. The U.S. Department of Justice indicted him on charges of wire fraud and money laundering. The U.K.'s Foreign and Commonwealth Office imposed concurrent sanctions, freezing significant London properties including a £12 million mansion on Avenue Road and a £100 million office building on Fenchurch Street, among other assets.

Most dramatically, the U.S. seized over $15 billion in Bitcoin—cryptocurrency that had been moved through Prince Group’s operations as part of their money laundering scheme. At current valuations (Bitcoin trading at approximately $88,400), this represents an extraordinary concentration of wealth now beyond Chen Zhi’s reach.

The Cambodian government’s response has been notably cautious. Officials stressed that Prince Group’s operations had “always complied with the law” and stated they would cooperate with formal evidence-based requests from international authorities. Yet crucially, to date, Cambodia has filed no charges against Chen Zhi or Prince Group for any alleged crimes committed within its borders—a striking absence that analysts attribute to Chen Zhi’s continued influence over Cambodia’s bureaucratic machinery.

What Chen Zhi’s Fall Reveals

Chen Zhi’s dramatic descent from Cambodia’s most honored businessman to an international criminal defendant illustrates several troubling realities: the vulnerability of developing nations to transnational criminal infiltration, the ways sophisticated financial networks can mask human trafficking and fraud, and the protective power that political connections can provide—at least temporarily.

His case also reveals why such operations flourished for years. The combination of legitimate business enterprises, political patronage, offshore structures, and cryptocurrency enabled an organization to hide massive criminal activity in plain sight. International cooperation and regulatory persistence ultimately pierced that veil, but only after thousands of victims suffered and billions in fraudulent proceeds were generated.

Chen Zhi’s once-secure position as Cambodia’s Duke now appears fragile, vulnerable to the mounting pressure from American and British enforcement agencies. What remains to be seen is whether his political connections will ultimately shield him from accountability, or whether international legal systems will prove more powerful than even Cambodia’s highest honors.