$15 Billion Pig Butchering Scam Boss Chen Zhi Extradited to China

Chinese state television CCTV has released footage showing Chen Zhi, the former chairman of the Cambodia-based multinational conglomerate Prince Group, being escorted off a plane in Beijing.

Handcuffed and hooded, the 38-year-old was led away by armed SWAT officers following his arrest in Cambodia. This marks a major turning point in the global fight against scam centres that have affected thousands of victims worldwide.

****A Joint Investigation****

The arrest on Tuesday, January 6, 2026, was the result of a months-long investigation between China and Cambodia. Alongside Chen, two other men, Xu Ji Liang and Shao Ji Hui, were also detained and sent back to China.

Beijing law enforcement authorities have actually been quietly tracking the Prince Group since 2020, and even set up a special task force to investigate the group, which they described as a massive illegal gambling and fraud ring based in Cambodia.

Investigation into Chen’s background shows he was a powerful figure in Cambodia, once serving as an advisor to the Prime Minister. However, his Cambodian citizenship was revoked by royal decree last month, which paved the way for this extradition.

Watch as Chinese forces bring Chen Zhi into custody

****Crimes Behind the Curtain****

Chen’s business empire is accused of being a front for pig butchering schemes. This is a type of fraud where scammers build long-term trust with victims online, usually through fake dating or social media profiles, before convincing them to put money into fake cryptocurrency platforms.

According to a US Justice Department indictment from October 2025, the Prince Group was one of Asia’s largest criminal organisations that apparently involved real estate and banking, but secretly operated phone farms and scam compounds across Cambodia.

Reportedly, Chen’s compounds were mostly manned by trafficked workers lured with fake job offers and then forced to work in slave-like conditions, surrounded by high walls and barbed wire. Prosecutors say he even kept records of beatings and ledgers tracking the profits from the scams.

These stolen funds were allegedly used to buy luxury yachts, private jets, and even a Picasso painting in New York. The indictment confirmed authorities seized $15 billion in Bitcoin linked to these operations, the largest seizure of its kind in history.

****Financial Consequences****

The financial consequence has been swift and quite damaging for the accused, as Prince Bank in Cambodia is currently being liquidated by the central bank, while authorities in the UK have frozen over £112 million in real estate. This includes a luxury London mansion and an office building. Furthermore, large sums of money and assets have also been seized in Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.

While the Prince Group previously claimed these allegations were baseless, the crackdown continues, and Chen is now in custody. In China, he faces charges for operating illegal casinos, fraud, and money laundering. Chinese authorities state they will soon release a list of other key members of the group and are warning them to surrender immediately.

****Experts’ Perspectives:****

In a perspective shared exclusively with Hackread.com, Dr. Margaret Cunningham, Vice President of Security & AI Strategy at Darktrace, noted that these professional scam organizations invest a “ton of resources” into identifying and building relationships with targets before “ultimately ripping them off for everything they’ve got.”

She points out that pig-butchering is a deeply “human” operation compared to traditional technical cybercrime, specifically because these centres use trafficked labor to work the targets. “The more you look into it,” she warned, “the worse it gets.”

This sentiment is echoed by April Lenhard, Principal Product Manager, Cyber Threat Intelligence at Qualys, who shared insights with Hackread.com, describing these romance schemes as “emotional warfare” where victims are conned out of their life savings by people whose full-time job is to make you fall in love with their persona.

Lenhard highlighted that cryptocurrency makes these crimes particularly attractive to criminals because “there is no safety net or overarching regulation… once it’s gone, it’s gone.”