Imagine a room in Cambodia that is more akin to a warehouse filled with rack after rack of cell phones, each one humming softly and logged into a fictitious social media profile that is sending messages to strangers halfway across the globe. According to US court documents, two of these facilities controlled about 76,000 accounts concurrently by operating 1,250 phones between them.
Those accounts were not being managed by independent contractors. Many of them were victims of human trafficking, imprisoned in compounds that resembled prisons, and made to perpetrate cryptocurrency investment scams nonstop. Prosecutors are now referring to this infrastructure as one of the most advanced and destructive cybercrime empires ever discovered.
| Xinbi Guarantee / Prince Group — Key Facts & Crackdown Profile | |
|---|---|
| Primary entity (sanctioned) | Xinbi Guarantee — Telegram-based black market |
| Estimated illicit volume | ~$20 billion in cryptocurrency transactions |
| Sanctioning authority | UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (March 2026) |
| Linked criminal empire | Prince Group — founded by Chen Zhi (Cambodian national) |
| Bitcoin seized (Oct 2025) | 127,271 BTC (~$14 billion) — largest ever Bitcoin seizure (US/UK joint op) |
| UK assets frozen | 19 London properties incl. ~£100M property; £9M penthouse seized |
| Scam compound scale | 10+ compounds in Cambodia; #8 Park compound held ~20,000 people |
| Phone farm scale | 1,250 phones controlling ~76,000 fake social media accounts (2 facilities) |
| Charges against Chen Zhi | Wire fraud conspiracy, money laundering; max 40 years if convicted |
| Status of accused | Chen Zhi remains at large (as of reporting date) |
| Platform used | Telegram (public-facing; no specialized dark web software required) |
| Scam types facilitated | Romance scams, crypto investment fraud, identity theft, money laundering |
| Reference | WIRED — Xinbi Guarantee UK Sanctions Report |
Its central operation, the Prince Group, which is purportedly led by Chen Zhi, a citizen of Cambodia, sits at the nexus of organized crime, digital fraud, and human trafficking on a scale that is still hard to comprehend. Chen Zhi was accused of money laundering and wire fraud conspiracy by the US Department of Justice in a federal court in New York in October 2025.
In what prosecutors called the biggest bitcoin seizure in history, the US and UK governments worked together to seize about 127,271 bitcoin, which at the time was valued at about $14 billion. At the same time, the UK froze 19 properties in London that were part of Chen’s network, one of which was valued at nearly £100 million. As of the time of reporting, Chen Zhi is still at large.
The Prince Group’s publicly accessible website listed financial services and real estate development as its businesses. The reality, according to the prosecution, was very different: at least ten scam compounds were constructed throughout Cambodia with the goal of maximizing victim reach and operational efficiency. Workers who had been trafficked from different nations were housed in the compounds; some of them had been enticed with false promises of legal employment before becoming trapped. There were reportedly about 20,000 people in the #8 Park compound alone.
According to court documents, internal Prince Group materials contained instructions on how to create convincing false identities, such as a warning to employees not to use profile pictures of women who were “too beautiful,” since more commonplace-looking pictures seemed more real to potential victims. In a subtly unsettling way, the operational detail in that guidance is nearly astounding. These weren’t opportunistic criminals operating low-class scams. This system was under management.
A second round of action followed in late March 2026. Financial sanctions were imposed by Britain’s Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office on Xinbi Guarantee, a black market on Telegram that processed billions of cryptocurrency transactions while selling the equipment, services, and technical infrastructure required for scam operations such as Chen Zhi’s. Xinbi is one of the biggest underground marketplaces ever recorded, handling an estimated $20 billion in illicit cryptocurrency volume.
In addition, the UK government punished a number of individuals involved in the operation of scam compounds in Cambodia and confiscated a £9 million penthouse in London that was associated with individuals sanctioned alongside the Xinbi action. According to Stephen Doughty, a minister in the Foreign Office, the sanctions made it very evident that those in charge of scam infrastructure would face repercussions.
The location of Xinbi’s operations makes it especially noteworthy and, in some respects, more concerning than a traditional dark web marketplace. You don’t need a Tor browser. There is no technical barrier to entry or specialized software. Only Telegram, the encrypted messaging service that hundreds of millions of people use on a daily basis for perfectly good reasons.
On that platform, Xinbi operated its accounts and channels in an open manner, offering stolen identity information, money-laundering services, and what court documents describe as occasionally electrified shackles to keep compound workers in line. It is unsettling to consider that a $20 billion criminal marketplace could integrate itself into an app that most people associate with news channels and group chats.
With differing degrees of seriousness, the larger cryptocurrency industry has been attempting to solve its criminal-use issue. Binance entered a guilty plea to charges of money laundering. Stricter enforcement has been promised by major exchanges. Last year, the New York Times revealed that cryptocurrency companies were in charge of transferring about $28 billion in what analysts called “dirty money.” The methodology of that figure is disputed, but not the direction.
It seems like there has been a significant change in how seriously these networks are taken as governments now sanction the marketplace infrastructure itself—the platforms that enable criminal operations to scale—instead of focusing on specific offenders. Disrupting Xinbi might not completely eradicate illegal activity, but rather drive it to other platforms. That’s the real worry. It is possible for decentralized criminal markets to reorganize.
According to reports, Chen Zhi used a portion of the money to buy rare timepieces, private jets, luxury travel, and a Picasso painting from an auction house in New York City. He could spend up to 40 years behind bars if found guilty. As of right now, a penthouse in London is locked, the assets are frozen, the bitcoin is seized, and the man responsible for creating the empire that financed it has not been located. There is a real crackdown. It hasn’t yet closed the gap.