Working with the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office (FCDO), the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) acted against criminal networks responsible for targeting citizens through online scams and the laundering of stolen funds.
Specifically, OFAC imposed sanctions on 146 targets within the Prince Group Transnational Criminal Organization (Prince Group TCO), a Cambodia-based network led by Cambodian national Chen Zhi. The network operated a transnational criminal empire through online investment scams targeting Americans and others worldwide.
Further, FinCEN finalized a rule to sever the Cambodia-based financial services conglomerate, Huione Group, from the U.S. financial system. Treasury said that Huione Group has laundered proceeds of virtual currency scams and heists on behalf of malicious cyber actors for years.
“The rapid rise of transnational fraud has cost American citizens billions of dollars, with life savings wiped out in minutes,” Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent said. “Treasury is taking action to protect Americans by cracking down on foreign scammers. Working in close coordination with federal law enforcement and international partners like the United Kingdom, Treasury will continue to lead efforts to safeguard Americans from predatory criminals.”
U.S. losses to online investment scams have increased over the last several years, totaling more than $16.6 billion. U.S. government estimates indicate that Americans lost at least $10 billion to Southeast Asia-based scam operations in 2024, a 66 percent increase over the prior year, with scams like those perpetrated by Prince Group TCO being particularly significant.
Prince Group TCO profits from a litany of transnational crimes including sextortion, money laundering, various frauds and rackets, corruption, illegal online gambling, and industrial-scale trafficking, torture, and extortion.
Workers are often lured by the promise of well-paid jobs in customer service, tech support, and related fields, but are instead held against their will and made to scam people from around the world in so-called “pig butchering” and other fraud schemes. These schemes involve cultivating, sometimes over the course of months, elaborate relationships with victims, gaining their trust and confidence, then inducing them to “invest” funds in fraudulent investment platforms ultimately controlled by scammers. The butchering refers to when the scammers go dark after taking money from their victims.
As a result of today’s action, all property and interests in property of the blocked persons that are in the United States or in the possession or control of U.S. persons are blocked and must be reported to OFAC. In addition, any entities that are owned, directly or indirectly, individually or in the aggregate, 50 percent or more by one or more blocked persons are also blocked.