On January 7, 2025, the Cambodian government announced that it had extradited Chen Zhi to China at Beijing's request.
On January 8, Chinese state television released images of police officers escorting Chen Zhi being blindfolded and handcuffed off the plane.
In a statement, the Chinese Ministry of Public Security called this arrest "another major achievement in law enforcement cooperation between China and Cambodia".
Meanwhile, Cambodia said that the extradition of Chen Zhi along with 2 other Chinese citizens is the result of months of cooperation between Cambodia and China.
Scammer boss Chen Zhi (38 years old) obtained Cambodian citizenship in 2014.
The extradition of Chen Zhi shows that the pressure is increasing with online fraud activities in Cambodia, according to experts.
However, this activity will not be immediately extinguished even though the extradition of Chen Zhi may cause a domino effect, causing the fraud activity to be transferred elsewhere.
According to the United Nations, at least 100,000 people were forced to participate in online scams in Cambodia. The US Treasury Department said that scams based in Southeast Asia, including Cambodia, stole at least 10 billion USD from victims in the US last year.
The extradition took place after the US Department of Justice filed an indictment against Chen Zhi in October last year on charges of online fraud and money laundering. US federal prosecutors also confiscated 15 billion USD of cryptocurrency obtained from Chen Zhi's fraudulent schemes.
US prosecutors accuse Chen Zhi's Prince Group of building and operating at least 10 complexes in Cambodia operating as forced labor camps, where workers are forced, frequently threatened by violence, to commit online fraud.
Meanwhile, from 2020 to 2025, according to rulings of Chinese criminal courts, there have been at least 13 criminal cases in China related to Prince Corporation.
In May 2020, Beijing city police established a special task force to investigate this company and described it as a "giant cross-border online gambling criminal organization".
Many countries are also promoting cooperation with Cambodia in efforts to suppress online fraud. However, Cambodia does not have extradition treaties with many countries, such as the United States and the United Kingdom.
In October 2025, South Korean officials said they are making efforts to bring back missing South Koreans, who are believed to have been trafficked into fraud centers in Cambodia.
In December last year, Thailand launched a bombing campaign targeting Cambodian fraud complexes.
