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This January, Chinese state media

treated viewers to a gripping spectacle.

The arrest and public humiliation of a

tycoon [music]

and suspected master criminal Chenu.

If you watch the footage, you see that

the guards in the SWAT gear have changed

him into the prison guard and they're

placing the black bag over his head. His

arms are in shackles. [music]

>> David Ramley is a Bloomberg investing

reporter based in Singapore. He watched

the footage of Chun's extradition from

Cambodia. A team armed with automatic

weapons leads Chun onto the plane.

>> And then it's later when he comes off

the plane, they take the bag off and his

eyes are just staring at the ground. And

clearly he realizes this is a very

different scenario to what he had

expected.

>> Chun allegedly ran a criminal network in

Cambodia for more than a decade. His

businesses were believed to have used

forced labor and were said to have

defrauded people all over the world of

billions of dollars. A lot of countries

had their eyes on him, including the

US's Federal Bureau of Investigation.

>> Different governments have different

accusations regarding Chen and his

organization. Most of it revolves around

money laundering. Some of the

accusations say what he was laundering

were proceeds [music] of crime and a lot

of that crime relates to a mix of online

gambling, scam centers. Chun's arrest

and extradition was a dramatic reversal

of fortune. He had spent years living a

billionaire's life in Singapore, London,

Taipei, and Hong Kong. He cruised with

politicians on his super yacht and was

chauffeurred around in luxury cars.

So what changed that led to this abrupt

and sudden downfall?

>> I think it was a mix of various factors.

On the one hand, you had rising pressure

from the Americans. They clearly

sanctioned a huge number and a huge

array of his organization. Chinese

authorities also had been ramping up

pressure and Cambodia basically had to

act. All the things that Chen had used

to maintain his support for so long

within the Cambodian regime. All the

things that had kept him operating now

coalesed into unstoppable pressure.

[music]

Welcome to the big take Asia from

Bloomberg News. I'm Juan Ha. Every week

we take you inside some of the world's

biggest [music] and most powerful

economies and the markets, tycoons, and

businesses that drive this evershifting

region.

Today in the show, the rise and fall of

Chenju, the tycoon who allegedly built

an empire on scams, [music] trafficking,

and political protection. How his

suspected criminal network earning

[music] tens of millions of dollars a

day suddenly crumbled and what led to

his swift downfall.

By any account, the rise of Chenzu was

meteoric. Born in 1987 in Fujian, a

southern coastal province of [music]

China, he got his start in business

running an internet cafe and gaming

center. When he started in Fujen, to the

best of our knowledge and according to

his own family offices, now deleted

biography, he was just another kid

worked with his father in the family

business before eventually getting into

internet cafes. And at a very young age,

I think circa 24, he went off to

Cambodia to seek a new fortune.

>> In 2014, Chen appears to have found a

way to acquire Cambodian citizenship

under foreign investor program. Soon

after he founded Prince Real Estate.

>> Well, at first his empire in Cambodia

was probably relatively modest. He was

doing property development. He was doing

certain buildings, business parks, etc.

But quickly he managed to flip these

into much larger enterprises. There was

a downturn around the early time that he

was there and a lot of Chinese

entrepreneurs and investors actually

left Cambodia because they found it a

little bit too risky. He doubled down

and in doing so he really established

himself as a key player.

>> Prince real estate quickly became a

household name across Cambodia. As

Chen's wealth grew, it expanded into a

full-blown conglomerate. He started

building casinos. He started building

hotels, restaurants. He even got into a

wide variety of services. By the end of

his time, he had Prince, which actually

had about a billion dollars in deposits

from various clients.

>> And then at some point, he's alleged to

have ventured into a lot of illicit

operations as well. Right. So a lot of

the accusations from both the NOS's as

well as from researchers, journalists,

the US agencies such as the FBI center

on the dual use aspect of his empire.

And inside of those office buildings

were his operations allegedly for

running scams targeting citizens all

over the world out of billions and

billions of dollars. That money would

often be funneled into the purchase of

crypto mining equipment and then the

crypto mining equipment was harvesting

huge amounts of crypto which was then

ostensibly clean. And that's one of the

key ways that he allegedly laundered

money. During those years, Prince Group

built business campuses and poured money

into transforming a Cambodian port city

called Sea Nukeville into a gambling hot

spot with numerous casinos and hotels.

Investigators allege some of these sites

became notorious scam hubs. [music] One

of them was a place called Mango Park.

>> Once upon a time, it was a farm of

mangoes and then they turned it into a

processing center for [music] mangoes.

And then they basically built over it a

series of office buildings. There are

many facilities filled with thousands of

workers who are actively scamming people

all over the world. According to various

indictments and accusations,

>> the allegations against Chen say workers

from across the world worked in shifts

around the clock in these complexes to

scam overseas victims out of money. The

scheme is known as pig butchering.

That's a reference to fattening pigs

before slaughter. These range the gamut

from your average love interest scam

where somebody claims to be a potential

wife or a potential husband for someone

who's perhaps a little bit lonely to the

classic Nigerian prince scam where

someone claims that they have a huge

fortune awaiting you if only you jump

through a series of hoops. And in other

cases, there are investment scams where

they claim to be very successful

investment brokers who take your money

and can triple or quadruple your your

funds if you use their platform to do

so. And in all of these cases,

allegedly, it's simply a way of

extracting money from people's bank

[music] accounts.

>> And David, what was life like for these

workers, many of whom, as you said, were

likely [music] trafficked. What kind of

conditions were they living and working

under?

>> Well, it's not quite black and white.

It's actually quite fascinating. Many of

the workers really were paid. They were

salaried employees who knew what they

were doing, but many others were not.

They had come under false pretenses.

Some had thought they were working

normal IT jobs. They were brought in.

They were taken to the room and if they

performed well, they actually got paid.

Sometimes they got bonuses. In other

cases, if they did not perform well, if

they constantly or even occasionally

made mistakes, they were often punished.

And the indictment details some of these

alleged punishments, beatings being

meated out, people being hunted down.

>> And how lucrative, David, were these

scam centers? Well, according to the

indictment, one of the key lieutenants

boasted in text messages that the

operation was generating in excess of 30

US million per day. That's only in 2018.

>> And obviously, you can't build a

business empire like Chen's of this

scale without connections. How well

connected politically was he in

Cambodia?

>> Chen was incredibly well connected to

the highest levels of politics and power

in Cambodia. There are a variety of ways

to illustrate this, but I'll give you

one. 2022 on a state visit to Cuba.

Chen's right there in videos that you

can look up right now on former Prime

Minister Hunen's personal official

verified Facebook page. Chen used his

growing wealth to build political

influence and styled himself as a

philanthropist. He donated trucks to

Cambodia's national police, handed out

scholarships, and gave about $2 million

to the Cambodian Red Cross, which is

overseen by Boon Rani, the wife of

longtime leader Hunen. And when Chun got

wind of then Prime Minister Hunen's

fondness for luxury watches, he

leveraged that too and set up a

specialty watchmaking school. Prince

Herology was the watch school that he

set up and produced the watches that

Hunen handed out to world leaders during

the Azan meeting. If you go to the

government collections of the US

government, the Canadian government and

the Australian government, you will find

wrist watches with Prince Herology and

his personal logo etched into the

equipment there.

>> By 2020, Chun had reached the absolute

pinnacle of Cambodian society. And

thanks to his high-powered political

connections, Chen and his businesses

were shielded and they flourished for

more than a decade.

>> Well, according to people we've spoken

to, it was definitely a fact that if you

moved against Chen, it was seen [music]

as you moving against Cambodia. And you

have to remember the geopolitics of the

time. Everyone wanted Cambodia to be on

its side in this new cold war scenario.

[music] and none wanted to offend Hunen,

Hunman, or the senior politicians of

Cambodia.

Protected, Chen allegedly built one of

the biggest scam syndicates in the

world. [music]

The combination of money from Prince's

legitimate and illicit businesses made

Chen extremely rich. And he moved money

offshore and began spending it.

>> He led the life of a global billionaire

in cities all over the planet. He had

properties in Hong Kong. He had

properties in Tokyo. He had properties

in Singapore, London, you name it. He

had a 54 m super yacht. And that was

only one of several yachts that he owned

or controlled. And on those yachts, he

would host highly [snorts] elaborate

parties. We're not talking normal

parties that you and I might attend.

We're talking parties with free flowing

whiskey aged for many many decades

costing thousands of dollars per drram

Cuban cigars of every vintage you can

imagine.

>> I mean the fact that there was so much

money flowing from Prince Group did that

raise any alarm at any of the banks?

Certainly what I found fascinating was

that several banks actually filed

suspicious transaction reports against

him and they filed that with various

regulators not just in Singapore but

also in Taiwan etc. The fact that they

themselves found him triggering so many

red flags that they shuttered his

accounts shows that many banks knew

something was up. But because there was

no way for the banks to warn each other

for quite fair privacy reasons and

because the state was not empowered in

some ways to warn other banks when a

separate bank enclosed someone's

accounts, he was simply able to spin up

new bank accounts at other institutions

and continue transferring money all over

the world. Chen could not be reached for

comment. A spokesperson for the Prince

Companies, who asked to be unnamed for

safety reasons, denied the allegations

from the US and UK against Chen and said

the US Department of Justice's legal

filings contained inconsistencies,

falsehoods, and egregious overreach.

After the break, how international

pressure from across the globe triggered

Chen's sudden downfall.

Countries have ways of recognizing those

who've made exceptional contributions.

In the US, the president gives out

presidential medals of freedom. In the

UK, there's nighthoods. In Cambodia, one

of the greatest honors that a civilian

can receive is the title of Nick Okna,

equivalent to a lord. And in July 2020,

the king bestowed that title on Chenju.

It was a remarkable achievement. But at

the very point that Chen had reached

these dizzying heights, events were in

play to bring him down. Chen's alleged

criminal enterprises benefited from the

CO 19 pandemic. People spent more time

online and the pool of potential scam

victims widened. And according to

experts, Chun and the Prince Group were

just one part of a broader network of

scam operations across Cambodia [music]

and the region. But as a number of

victims, likely millions worldwide, from

the US to China, began to grow, so did

scrutiny. [music]

Law enforcement agencies had already

caught a scent of what Chen was up to.

[music] And in 2020, Chinese authorities

set up a task force to investigate the

prince [music] group in Cambodia. But

real international pressure didn't come

until the end of last year.

>> In October, the US and UK governments

finally decided to take action against

him and comprehensive action, I should

say. They sanctioned over a hundred

different entities all over the world

and many of these were controlling

entities used to run companies in other

parts of the world. It was a real shock

to the system, especially for the Asian

law enforcement organizations. They

actually had not been made aware that

these sanctions were about to hit. So it

was only after the sanctions were

announced that governments in Hong Kong,

Singapore, Taiwan, and elsewhere started

to take some serious action and seized

assets ranging from cars to jewelry to

gold and property. US federal

prosecutors also revealed that they had

seized nearly 130,000 bitcoins Chun once

controlled. That's a record hall then

worth $15 billion.

This week, lawyers for Chen filed a

motion in a New York court to dismiss

the US government's seizure of a hall of

Bitcoin. It's linked to him. The lawyers

argue that many of the allegations

against Chen are provably and obviously

false. And that accusations he oversaw

scam compounds were non-specific

statements and background commentary

about conditions in Cambodia. They

raised questions about the timeline of

the cryptocurrency seizure and said the

Bitcoin couldn't possibly have been the

proceeds of fraud or money laundering.

>> Last year, tensions between Thailand and

Cambodia escalated to deadly violence

along the border. And in the leadup to

Thailand's elections, scam centers

around the region became a hot button

issue in the campaigns. The Thai

government had turned it into a war on

the scams. They had actually actively

bombarded scam centers on the border

with Thailand. They were illustrating to

the international public the extent of

the scam activity, targeting citizens

around the world. At this point, Chun's

operations have become too big and his

victims too numerous to ignore.

President Trump himself even got

involved, forcing Cambodia to crack down

on scam centers that target Americans.

He explicitly made it a part of a deal

for lower tariffs. This was just a

series of unfortunate for him events

that came together. It's hard for him to

predict that the Americans would

suddenly do such a thing. It's hard for

him to predict that the ties would use

scam activities as a key tent pole for

justifying their invasion of Cambodian

alleged territory. And while the

Americans were honing in on Chen and his

suspected [music] scam centers, China

was also making progress on its

investigation. For weeks, some of Chen's

staff were [music] expecting Cambodia to

reach a deal with China that would

result in just a slap on the wrist for

Chen. But the end when it came was

[music] sudden. In a late night

statement on January 7th, Cambodia

announced that Chen and two others had

[music] been arrested and immediately

extradited. Since his arrest and

extradition, what do we know of the

operations of Prince Group now [music]

with him out of the picture?

>> Well, we understand that the operations

of Prince Group are much depleted.

several organizations that were in full

swing operation before he was arrested

such as Prince, [music]

Prince Real Estate, Prince Herology, the

watchmaking school were all curtailed or

shut down.

>> Now these kinds of scam centers which

are prevalent in parts of Asia, they

often depend on trafficked workers.

Cambodia shut down a number of these

centers. What happens to these workers

now? Well, what's happened since Chen's

arrest has been remarkable. We've seen a

lot of scam centers throughout Cambodia

emptying out. Streams of people from all

over the world, India, Indonesia, China,

[music] other parts, queuing out front

of their country's embassies trying to

get home, saying that they had escaped

and wanting to get a ticket back to

their place of birth. But what we've

also heard is that a lot of centers are

allegedly still in operation. They've

simply quietened down. According to one

of the senior ministers we've spoken to,

scam activity is down 50% in Cambodia.

Now, we don't know exactly what that

refers to. Is it the number of scammers

in countries, the number of scam

operations or the revenue lost? But it

shows that even by the Cambodian

government's own admission, there's

still a substantial amount of scam

activity happening today, right now. At

the end of the day, David says scamming

is just too lucrative for criminals to

resist. And these scammer networks are

like hydras. You cut off one head, but

others are ready to emerge and replace

them.

>> I think the main thing standing in the

way of shutting down all of these scam

[music] centers is greed. The huge

amount of money that they are able to

generate [music] is liable to create

corruption in any market, let alone

emerging markets and frontier markets.

Basically, the only way this gets shut

down is if you have clean [music]

government willing to take drastic

action against some of the most senior

members of your own country, [music]

both in business, politics, and perhaps

other spheres of influence. And that's a

hard task. I think one unanimous thing

we've heard from every expert is that

[music] this is not the end of scams

either in Southeast Asia or the world.

This industry will continue and there

will continue to be victims. [music]

Now, how successful those efforts are in

shutting down these centers, that

remains to be seen and coordinated

action can make a real impact on that.

>> [music]

>> This is the Bigtake Asia from Bloomberg

News. I'm Juan Ha. To get more from the

Big Take and unlimited access to all of

Bloomberg.com, [music]

subscribe today at

bloomberg.com/mpodcast

offer. If you like the episode, [music]

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the show. [music] Thanks for listening.

See you next time.