Across Southeast Asia, scammers lure internet users globally into fake romantic relationships and cryptocurrency investments.
Initially largely targeting Chinese speakers -- from whom they have extracted billions, prompting rising public anger -- the scammers have expanded their operations into multiple languages to steal vast sums from victims around the world.
Those conducting the scams are sometimes willing volunteers, sometimes trafficked foreign nationals who have been trapped and forced to work under threat of torture.
Last year, a series of crackdowns largely driven by Beijing -- which wields significant economic and diplomatic influence in the region -- saw thousands of workers released from scam centres in Myanmar and Cambodia and repatriated to their home countries, many of them to China.
Now Beijing has turned its focus to the bosses at the apex of the criminal pyramids, netting its biggest player so far with the arrest and extradition of Chen Zhi from Cambodia this week.
The arrests were "almost certainly a result of Chinese pressure... coordinated behind closed doors", according to Jason Tower, senior expert at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.
Chen, a Chinese-born businessman, was indicted in October by US authorities, who said his Prince Group conglomerate was a cover for a "sprawling cyber-fraud empire".
Phnom Penh said it detained him following a request from Beijing, and after "several months of joint investigative cooperation" with Chinese authorities.
Analysts say Phnom Penh's inaction became intolerable to Beijing, which also wanted to avoid the embarrassment of Chen going on trial in the US.
Jacob Sims, a transnational crime expert and visiting fellow at Harvard University's Asia Center, added that Chen "has a number of reported ties to Chinese government officials".
"China acted in order to prevent him from being extradited to the US given the political sensitivities," he told AFP.
- 'Cut off the flow' -
Beijing made a show of the tycoon's extradition, with video released by China's public security ministry on Thursday showing the 38-year-old in handcuffs with a black bag over his head being escorted off a plane with black-clad armed security forces waiting on the runway.
The sudden extradition of Chen from Cambodia -- where he had close ties to political elites before his naturalised citizenship was revoked by the Southeast Asian nation last month -- follows China scooping up other wanted fugitives abroad to mete out justice on its own soil.
In November, She Zhijiang -- the Chinese-born founder of Yatai Group, which allegedly built a notorious scam hub on the Thai-Myanmar border -- boarded a flight to China in handcuffs after spending three years behind bars in Bangkok.
The same month Beijing held talks with law enforcement agencies from Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam agreeing to "intensify joint efforts against transnational telecom and online fraud".
China earlier publicly handed down death sentences to over a dozen members of powerful gang families with fraud operations in northern Myanmar, with their confessions of grisly crimes broadcast on national television.
There could be more high-profile arrests to come: weeks ago the public security ministry issued arrest warrants for 100 more fugitives seen as the scam industry's key financial backers, pledging Thursday to "cut off the flow", "pull out the nails", and "sever the chain".
But while the alleged leaders of some major scam groups have been arrested, Sims said the status quo for the wider industry was unlikely to change without sustained and "extremely high" pressure from the international community.
"The vast majority of Cambodia's hundreds of scam compounds are operating with strong support from the Cambodian government," he said.
Cambodian officials deny allegations of government involvement and say authorities are cracking down. Authorities had said in July that the tally of arrests had already reached 2,000.
While in prison, She Zhijiang claimed to have previously acted as a spy for Beijing's intelligence agency before he and his Myanmar urban development project were "betrayed" by the Chinese Communist Party.
His lawyer told AFP that he had been pleading for Thai authorities to allow him to face trial in the US and said he feared "he will be deprived of due process" and "ultimately disappeared".
Some analysts pointed to limitations in China's justice system that might prevent the full extent of the cyberscam schemes from being brought to light.
"China is not an open society where investigation will reveal the true nature of things," said Cambodian academic and former ambassador Pou Sothirak.
China confirms extradition of accused scam boss from Cambodia
Phnom Penh (AFP) Jan 8, 2026 -
Accused scam boss Chen Zhi has been extradited to China from Cambodia, Beijing confirmed on Thursday, after he was indicted by the United States over alleged multibillion-dollar fraud.
Video released by China's Ministry of Public Security on Thursday showed Chen in handcuffs as security forces lifted a black bag off his head, after he was escorted off a China Southern plane with black-clad armed guards waiting on a runway.
Cambodia said earlier on Thursday that the bank founded by Chen, Prince Bank, had been put into liquidation.
The bank is a subsidiary of Chen's Prince Holding Group, one of Cambodia's biggest conglomerates, which Washington alleges has served as a front for "one of Asia's largest transnational criminal organizations".
China's public security ministry said Chen had been brought back to China from Phnom Penh and lauded the "major achievement in China-Cambodia law enforcement cooperation".
Chinese authorities will soon issue arrest warrants for "the first batch of key members of Chen Zhi's criminal group, and will resolutely apprehend the fugitives", it said in a statement.
The National Bank of Cambodia (NBC), the Southeast Asian country's central bank, said Prince Bank had been placed into liquidation and "suspended from providing new banking services, including accepting deposits and providing credit".
It said in a statement auditor Morisonkak MKA has been appointed as liquidator. Prince Bank has about a billion dollars in assets under management, according to its website.
Customers "can withdraw money normally" and borrowers "must continue to fulfill their obligations", the NBC said.
- 'Building pressure' -
Chinese-born Chen was sanctioned by Washington and London in October for directing alleged cyberfraud run by hundreds of scammers trafficked into compounds in Cambodia.
Cambodian authorities said they arrested Chen and two other Chinese nationals this week and extradited them at China's request.
Chinese courts have sentenced people to death over involvement in scams, including more than a dozen people last year for their participation in criminal groups with fraud operations in Myanmar's Kokang region, which borders China.
The US Justice Department declined to comment on Wednesday.
Jacob Sims, a transnational crime expert and visiting fellow at Harvard University's Asia Center, said the "vast majority" of the dozens of scam compounds in Cambodia operated with "strong support" from the government
"This arrest comes after months of building pressure against the Cambodian government for continuing to harbor and abet a now famous criminal actor," Sims told AFP.
A change in status quo could only happen if international pressure on Cambodia's "scam-invested oligarchs" was sustained, he said.
Cambodian officials deny allegations of government involvement and say authorities are cracking down.
However, Amnesty International said last year that rights abuses in scam hubs were happening on a "mass scale", and the government's poor response suggested its complicity.
Chen was charged by US authorities of wire fraud and money laundering conspiracy charges involving approximately 127,271 seized bitcoin, worth more than $11 billion at current prices.
Prince Group has denied the allegations.
Prince Bank and a law firm that issued a statement on the group's behalf in November did not respond immediately to AFP requests for comment.
- Former adviser -
US prosecutors accused Chen of presiding over compounds in Cambodia where trafficked workers carried out cryptocurrency fraud schemes that netted billions.
Victims were targeted through "pig butchering" scams -- investment schemes that build trust over time before stealing funds.
The operations have caused billions in global losses.
Scam centres across Cambodia, Myanmar and the region lure foreign nationals -- many Chinese -- with fake job ads, then force them under threat of violence to commit online fraud.
Amnesty International has identified at least 53 scam compounds in Cambodia alone, where rights groups say criminal networks perpetrate human trafficking, forced labour, torture and slavery.
Experts estimate tens of thousands of people work in the multibillion-dollar industry, some willingly and others trafficked.
Prince Group has operated across more than 30 countries since 2015 under the guise of legitimate real estate, financial services and consumer businesses, US prosecutors have said.
Prince Bank opened in 2015 as a microfinance institution and became a commercial bank in 2018.
In Cambodia, Chen served as an adviser to Prime Minister Hun Manet and his father, former leader Hun Sen, but his Cambodian nationality was revoked in December.
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