PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — Cambodia’s government announced Wednesday it has arrested and extradited to China a prominent tycoon who allegedly led a huge online scam operation and was wanted by U.S. authorities on related criminal charges.

Cambodia’s Interior Ministry said Chen Zhi and two other Chinese citizens were arrested and extradited Tuesday following months of investigation and at the request of Chinese authorities. Chen has dual nationality and his Cambodian citizenship was revoked in December, it said.

Chen, chairman of Cambodia’s Prince Holding Group, was accused in October by the U.S. Treasury Department and the U.K. Foreign Office of heading a transnational criminal network that defrauded victims worldwide and exploited trafficked workers.

Scam centers have proliferated across Southeast Asia, swindling money from victims by persuading them to join bogus investment schemes. According to estimates from the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, scam victims worldwide lost between $18 billion and $37 billion in 2023.

Growing pressure on Cambodia

The U.S. and U.K. imposed sanctions against Chen, 38, and his companies, which were primarily involved in real estate development and financial services.

U.S. authorities seized what they said was an estimated $14 billion in bitcoin linked to Chen or his operations, and charged him with wire fraud and money laundering conspiracies. He was accused of sanctioning violence against workers, authorizing bribes to foreign officials and using his other businesses, such as online gambling and cryptocurrency mining, to launder illicit profits.

Prosecutors in the U.S. charged that his organization scammed 250 Americans out of millions of dollars, with one losing $400,000 in cryptocurrency. In 2024, Americans lost at least $10 billion to Southeast Asia-based scams, according to the U.S. Treasury Department.

There was no immediate comment on the extraditions from the federal prosecutors’ office in Brooklyn where Chen had been indicted. Chen and the Prince Holding Group had denied any wrongdoing.

Chinese authorities had no immediate comment on the extradition of Chen and the two other individuals named by Cambodia's Interior Ministry as Xu Ji Liang and Shao Ji Hui.

Jacob Daniel Sims, a transnational crime expert and visiting fellow at Harvard University’s Asia Center, said the Cambodian government had faced so much sustained international pressure that inaction was no longer an option.

“Handing Chen Zhi to China was the path of least resistance. It defuses Western scrutiny while aligning with Beijing’s likely preference to keep a politically sensitive case out of U.S. and U.K. courts,” Sims said.

Amnesty International last year published the findings of an 18-month investigation into cybercrime in Cambodia, which the human rights group said “point towards state complicity in abuses carried out by Chinese criminal gangs.”

“What we are seeing here is a mafia state actor backed into a corner and choosing the best among bad options, not signs of legitimate reform," Sims said.

In addition to the bitcoin seized by the U.S. government, British authorities froze Chen’s British businesses and assets, including a 12 million-euro-mansion and a 100-million-euro office building in London. Other assets were later seized in Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Online scams have flourished in Southeast Asia

Cybercrime has flourished in Southeast Asia where law enforcement is weak, particularly in Cambodia and Myanmar, with casinos often serving as hubs for criminal activity. Trafficked foreign nationals were employed to run “romance” and cryptocurrency scams, often recruited with false job offers and then forced to work in conditions of near-slavery.

Chen’s U.S. indictment alleged that Prince Holding Group built at least 10 compounds in Cambodia.

The operations became an embarrassment to the Chinese government, especially when they targeted Chinese citizens. Beijing in mid-2023 pressured Myanmar to crack down on the crimes, and some kingpins were extradited to be tried in China. Several received death sentences.

A 2023 report by the U.N. human rights office estimated that at least 120,000 people across Myanmar and 100,000 people in Cambodia may have been held in situations where they were forced to work on online scams. Experts believe that such operations are continuing.

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Associated Press writer Grant Peck reported from Bangkok. AP writers Michael Sisak in New York and Jack Brook in New Orleans contributed to this report.

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