In recent years, border areas between Thailand, Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia have become hot spots for online scams.
Here, gangs defraud or force victims to invest in fake projects and transfer money through Bitcoin, Ether or Stablecoin, before the money is spent through complex money laundering networks.
These tricks reflect the large role of digital currency in sophisticated criminal organizations in the context of increasingly widely accepted digital assets.
After seizing 13.4 billion USD worth of Bitcoin from Chinese-American businessman Chen Zhi last month, the US Department of Justice announced the establishment of an anti-fraud task force to deal with digital investment fraud against Americans this week.
The establishment of this force is a mental-point initiative and the clearest statement showing that the US intends to confront transnational criminal networks with the full power of the state, blockchain analytics company TRM Labs said.
According to the US Department of Justice, each year, fraud rings in Southeast Asia appropriate nearly 10 billion USD from US citizens.
In another development, the Chinese Ministry of Public Security on November 12 extradited She Zhijiang - a Chinese citizen accused of operating an illegal gambling, who was arrested by Thai police in August 2022.
On the same day, China's Ministry of Public Security said it would "proactively promote the establishment of an international alliance to combat telecommunications and network fraud", thereby strengthening law enforcement cooperation with other countries.
Last month, during a meeting with US President Donald Trump in Busan, South Korea, Chinese President Xi Jinping said that the two countries have great potential for cooperation in areas such as anti-money laundering.
Also last month, Chinese police said they were working with British law enforcement to track down suspects and illegal cash flow related to the case of Chinese super scammer Qian Z exited, while doing everything possible to help more than 128,000 Chinese investors get their money back.
From 2014 to 2017, Qian operated a series of fraudulent financial investment projects in China, transferring the money he had appropriated to Bitcoin. When he arrived in England, the super scammer continued to find ways to launder money. Qian was arrested last year and pleaded guilty in London in September.
These acquisition campaigns have led to some of the largest cryptocurrency seizures in history. In 2018, British police seized an e-wallet containing more than 61,000 bit bit bit bitches during the investigation of Qian.
In October 2025, the US Department of Justice announced the seizure of 127,271 bit bit bitons from Chen Zhi - Chairman of Prince Group, who was prosecuted for online fraud and money laundering for operating forced labor campuses in Cambodia.
