The U.S. government on Tuesday announced a new tranche of sanctions against individuals and entities connected to Cambodia’s Prince Holding Group, which it has previously accused of running a region-spanning “cyberfraud empire.”
In a statement, the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced that it was listing nine people and 26 entities linked to Prince, including “leadership, investors in scam compounds, and front companies.”
“Scam centers in Southeast Asia steal billions of dollars from American victims each year,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in the statement. “Treasury will continue using its tools to disrupt the networks behind this egregious fraud and protect Americans.”
The action builds on the efforts that OFAC announced in conjunction with the U.K. last October, when it imposed sanctions on 146 individuals and entities connected to Prince, including its chairman, Chen Zhi. At that time, Treasury designated Prince as a “transnational criminal network,” detailing its involvement in cyberfraud, human trafficking, and money laundering on a grand scale.
In parallel, federal prosecutors also unsealed an indictment charging Chen, a Chinese-Cambodian tycoon who has served as advisor to both former Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and his son and successor Hun Manet, with wire fraud and money laundering. This involved the seizure of around $15 billion in bitcoin, which the Justice Department described as its “largest ever forfeiture action.”
