Treasury Targets Prince Group’s Global Scam and Money-Laundering Infrastructure
On November 5th, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned 4 individuals and 41 entities that it said supported the growing business network of Cambodia-based Prince Group, a transnational criminal organization previously designated for sophisticated cyber-enabled fraud, money laundering and human trafficking activity. The designations are the latest in a series of actions taken by the U.S. government against the group and its leadership over the past two years in an attempt to target the very lifeblood of an operation that authorities say has defrauded countless individuals across the United States, the United Kingdom, China, Taiwan, and Cambodia to the tune of tens of billions of dollars in illicit profits.
Prince Group has historically marketed itself as a multinational conglomerate with interests that include real estate, financial services, consumer businesses and other commercial ventures. U.S. prosecutors allege a darker side to their operations however, as behind the public-facing business, founder and chairman Chen Zhi and his senior associates reportedly have built a transnational criminal enterprise that operates forced-labor scam compounds throughout Southeast Asia. The DOJ alleged that the organization uses legitimate-looking enterprises, online gambling and cryptocurrency-mining operations to launder proceeds of their illicit activities, relying heavily on “pig-butchering” schemes. In these increasingly common fraud ploys, scammers generally establish contact with their victims through social media or online messaging platforms, cultivate trust their trust over time, and ultimately persuade them to transfer funds or crypto into fake investment opportunities. Their supposed investment gains are fabricated, and once the victim sends the funds, the money is diverted and moved through accounts or digital-asset addresses controlled by the perpetrators never to be seen again, leaving their victims to deal with the financial consequences.
With their operations reaching a larger international audience, the U.S. Justice Department began to mount their offensive against the group last year. In October of 2025, the DOJ moved to indict Zhi in Brooklyn federal court for wire fraud and money laundering conspiracies. Further, an additional 146 entities/individuals associated with Prince Group were also formally designated as part of this operation. The DOJ’s action also included a civil forfeiture complaint covering approximately 127,271 Bitcoin, which was valued at approximately $15 billion at the time. Prosecutors alleged that the Bitcoin sum represented the bulk of the proceeds of the aforementioned fraud and money-laundering schemes and marked the largest forfeiture action in the Department’s history.2
While the latest action pales in comparison to the 2025 effort, the most recent move is an attempt to infiltrate the infrastructure behind the group’s ongoing fraud operations, which are relying more heavily on the use of offshore holding companies, corporate administrators, and financial facilitators located across the globe. The Treasury said the newly designated network has helped to maintain Prince’s operations following the earlier sanctions by managing offshore structures, obscuring beneficial ownership, facilitating commercial activity and providing administrative and financial services. Some individuals operating on the firm’s behalf have been accused of helping to move property or to hold companies on behalf of previously designated executives. 1
Unfortunately for federal regulators and law enforcement, the details revealed in these actions highlight the issue that makes modern financial crime so pervasive. Today, a criminal network rarely needs to move all of its proceeds through one conspicuous account or even one particular company. Given the growth of both communications and technology within the financial space, criminal groups can now disperse their control across multiple jurisdictions, use layers of legal entities and complex beneficial ownership structures, and rely with a large degree of confidence on intermediaries whose individual activities may look ordinary when viewed in isolation, all while shrouding the larger illicit activity of the organization.
All told, the latest designations are based on OFAC’s findings that the newly named individuals provided material support to the organization or that the entities were owned or controlled by designated persons.1 As such, the compliance implications of the actions now come to the forefront of the discussion. Under OFAC’s rules, property and interests in property of designated persons that are within the United States or in the possession or control of U.S. persons are blocked and must be reported. Entities owned 50% or more by one or more blocked persons are also expected to be blocked. U.S. persons are now effectively prohibited from transactions involving blocked property unless an exemption or authorization applies.1 American financial institutions will now be tasked with increased responsibilities in relation to the Prince Group, including reviewing beneficial ownership beyond the immediate customer, paying attention to sanctions evasion efforts following the designations, and given their propensity for this illicit activity, be mindful of human-trafficking indicators. The true effectiveness of these new designations and their ability to disrupt this transnational network will largely depend on how effectively domestic and international financial institutions identify these connections and ultimately block prohibited dealings.
Citations
1. U.S. Department of the Treasury. Treasury targets global scam networks and the corporate infrastructure that enables them. Published November 5, 2026.
2. U.S. Department of the Treasury. U.S. and U.K. take largest action ever targeting cybercriminal networks in Southeast Asia. Published October 14, 2025.