"Over the last five years, criminals behind widespread romance and investment scams-often inelegantly referred to as " pig butchering"-have stolen tens of billions from people around the world. Now law enforcement has carried out one of its biggest operations yet against that sprawling scam industry, targeting the operators of several modern slavery scam compounds in Southeast Asia-where, as a whole, hundreds of thousands of human trafficking victims have been forced to run the fraud operations on behalf of criminal gangs."
"This Prince Group organized crime entity, OFAC says, is made up of the Prince Holding Group, a Cambodia-based company, its chairman and CEO Chen Zhi, and his associates and business partners. Publicly, the company describes itself as "one of the largest conglomerates in Cambodia" and says it is involved in real estate development and financial services. However, the DOJ alleges that "in secret" Chen and other executives "grew Prince Group into one"
Officials in the United States and United Kingdom coordinated sanctions and law enforcement actions against a Cambodian organization tied to large-scale romance and investment scams. The US Treasury's OFAC designated 146 targets linked to the Prince Group Transnational Criminal Organization, including individuals and shell companies. The Department of Justice and FBI seized almost 130,000 bitcoin, valued around $15 billion at announcement, marking the largest US cryptocurrency seizure to date. The designated operation allegedly ran modern slavery scam compounds in Southeast Asia where hundreds of thousands of trafficking victims were forced to operate fraud schemes.
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