In brief
- Taiwanese prosecutors have indicted 62 over their alleged links to Prince Group, a network accused of operating scam compounds in Cambodia.
- They allege that some $339 million was laundered through Taiwan using shell companies and purchases of luxury goods and real estate.
- Scam compounds have proliferated across Southeast Asia, with Interpol last year designating them as a global threat.
Taiwanese prosecutors have indicted 62 people over their alleged links to Prince Group, a network designated as a transnational criminal organization by the U.S. Department of Justice.
According to a report by Reuters, those indicted include the group’s chairman and alleged mastermind Chen Zhi, who was arrested in Cambodia and extradited to China earlier this year. Thirteen companies were also charged with offenses, including “initiating, directing, manipulating, and commanding a criminal organization.”
Prosecutors in Taipei allege that the group funneled illicit funds through Taiwan to “conceal and disguise the source and flow of the criminal proceeds,” using shell companies and the purchasing of luxury goods, sports cars, and real estate.
In total, some $339 million ($T10.8 billion) was allegedly laundered through Taiwan, around $174 million ($T5.5 billion) of which has been seized.
“To conceal and disguise criminal proceeds, they exploited Taiwanese nationals to carry out money-laundering activities in Taiwan through online gambling and underground remittances,” prosecutors said in a statement, adding that their activities had “seriously disrupted Taiwan’s financial order and social stability” and its international image.
In October last year, Chen Zhi was indicted in a federal court in Brooklyn, New York on counts of wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy for his alleged involvement in “pig butchering” scams operated from scam compounds in Cambodia and using coerced labor.
At the same time, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York and the Justice Department’s National Security Division filed a civil forfeiture complaint for 127,271 BTC, then worth around $15 billion—the largest such action in the DOJ’s history.
In November, Reuters reported, the Prince Group denied any wrongdoing in a statement issued via a U.S. law firm.
Scam compounds in Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia has emerged as a hotbed of scam compounds, with Interpol last year elevating them to a global threat.
The compounds, which often rely on coerced labor, are used to conduct so-called “pig butchering” scams, in which social engineering is employed to convince victims to purchase cryptocurrency, before the scammers divert and seize control of the funds using fake investment domains and apps.
In 2025, the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned 19 entities across Burma and Cambodia, dismantling scam operations that cost victims more than $10 billion in 2024. Last month, a cross-agency “strike force” set up to target scam centers revealed that it had frozen or seized some $580 million in cryptocurrency.
At the time, Deddy Lavid, CEO of blockchain analytics platform Cyvers, told Decrypt that the firm had identified 27,000 “increasingly decentralized and hybrid” criminal groups involved in pig butchering scams worldwide, with some $27.5 billion in fraud exposure and detected illicit value flows.
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