Chen Zhi emerged as a controversial figure in the cryptocurrency world through allegations tying him to massive fraud schemes involving Bitcoin and other digital assets. Born in China’s Fujian province in 1987, he relocated to Cambodia around 2011, where he built Prince Holding Group into a conglomerate spanning real estate, banking, and more, amassing significant wealth and political influence, including advisory roles to Cambodian leaders like Hun Sen. U.S. authorities accused him of masterminding “pig-butchering” scams—romance and investment cons that tricked victims worldwide into sending billions in cryptocurrency, primarily Bitcoin, to fraudulent platforms he allegedly controlled.
These scams operated from secretive compounds in Cambodia, particularly Sihanoukville, where trafficked workers were forced to manage fake online personas and “phone farms” to lure victims with promises of high Bitcoin investment returns. The U.S. Department of Justice indicted Chen in 2025 for wire fraud and money laundering, seizing around $15 billion in Bitcoin—described as the largest such cryptocurrency forfeiture in history—from wallets linked to his network. Funds were laundered through his businesses, including Bitcoin mining operations and offshore entities, blending legitimate ventures with illicit proceeds.
Chen’s story mirrors high-profile cryptocurrency scandals covered in newspaper-style programs, such as those on FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried or the OneCoin pyramid scheme led by Ruja Ignatova. Like Bankman-Fried, whose 2022 collapse involved misusing customer crypto deposits amid rapid empire-building, Chen allegedly used political patronage in Cambodia to shield operations while flaunting philanthropy and real estate projects. Both cases highlight how charismatic tycoons leveraged Bitcoin’s anonymity for fraud, drawing regulatory crackdowns from the U.S. Treasury and DOJ, with media exposés in outlets like BBC and NYT detailing the human trafficking and global victim impact.
Similar to OneCoin’s fake blockchain that defrauded $4 billion without genuine crypto utility, Chen’s network preyed on Bitcoin hype, convincing victims to transfer real BTC to scammer wallets under false pretenses of yield farming or trading platforms. Newspaper programs, akin to Reuters or CNN investigations, emphasized Chen’s elite ties—Cambodian citizenship, Neak Oknha title, and U.K. properties—paralleling Ignatova’s jet-set image that masked her Ponzi scheme. These exposés underscore recurring patterns: rapid wealth from crypto booms funding influence, only unraveling under international sanctions and indictments.
Recent developments, as of January 2026, saw Cambodia extradite Chen to China following his arrest, marking a dramatic fall for the once-untouchable tycoon amid joint U.S.-U.K. actions freezing his assets. This resolution echoes the swift media-driven accountability in prior cases, with outlets framing it as a blow to Southeast Asia’s scam hubs, though questions linger about Cambodia’s complicity. Chen’s saga serves as a stark lesson on Bitcoin’s dual role in innovation and exploitation, fueling ongoing calls for stricter.
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