According to Al Jazeera, the crackdown targets a number of entities and individuals linked to the Prince Group network that used hundreds of thousands of trafficked workers for defrauding people around the world.
The United States and United Kingdom have announced sweeping sanctions against a Southeast Asia-based multinational crime network for running a chain of “scam centres” in Cambodia, Myanmar and across the region, using trafficked workers to defraud people around the world into bogus crypto investments.
The US Treasury Department on Tuesday said it had taken what it described as the largest action ever in Southeast Asia, targeting 146 people within the Cambodia-based Prince Group network, which it declared a transnational criminal organisation.
The UK also slapped sanctions on six entities and individuals associated with the Prince Group, freezing 19 London properties worth more than 100 million pounds ($134m) linked to the network.
Federal prosecutors in the US also unsealed an indictment charging Chinese-Cambodian tycoon Chen Zhi, the Prince Group’s 37-year-old chair, on charges of wire fraud and money laundering conspiracy. Chen, who is known as Vincent and remains at large, faces up to 40 years in prison if convicted on the charges.
The US Justice Department also filed the largest forfeiture action in its history against the group, seizing Bitcoin worth more than $14bn at current prices.
Chen was the “mastermind behind a sprawling cyberfraud empire”, Assistant Attorney General John Eisenberg said, with US Attorney Joseph Nocella describing the network’s operations as “one of the largest investment fraud operations in history”.
The group is accused of running a network of purpose-built scam centres that functioned as forced labour camps across Cambodia, Myanmar and other countries in the region, where workers – many of them Chinese – were lured through fake job advertisements.
The sanctions came as South Korea announced a ban on travel to parts of Cambodia, amid concerns over its citizens being kidnapped and exploited into working for the scam centres.
The ban applied to the Bokor Mountain area in Kampot Province, Bavet City, and Poipet City, the South Korean Foreign Ministry said.
Seoul also dispatched a government delegation, headed by the vice foreign minister and including police as well as intelligence agents, to Cambodia on wednesday to discuss the issue.
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