# Taiwan indicts 62 over alleged Prince Group scam network links
On the event date, prosecutors in Taiwan indicted 62 people for their alleged links to the Prince Group, a Cambodia-based network accused of running cyberscam and money-laundering operations. The indictment also covered 13 companies, which prosecutors said were used in the alleged scheme.
The case sits inside a much larger transnational fraud economy that has grown around Southeast Asia in recent years. According to the evidence packet, the Prince Group has been accused of operating a vast system of scam centres from Cambodia, and the US has described it as a front for a multibillion-dollar online fraud and money-laundering operation. Beijing has also singled out founder Chen Zhi, calling him the ringleader of a major cross-border gambling and fraud syndicate.
Taiwanese prosecutors said the island was one place where Chen allegedly funnelled illicit funds through shell companies. The packet says those funds were used to buy luxury goods, sports cars and real estate. Prosecutors said the purpose was to conceal and disguise the source and flow of criminal proceeds.
The financial scale described by investigators was substantial. The prosecution estimated that the group remitted about T$10.8 billion into Taiwan from overseas for alleged money-laundering purposes. Authorities believe that money was then used to acquire 24 properties, 35 vehicles and another T$55.53 million in assets such as cash, designer bags and shoes. More than T$5.5 billion in assets have already been seized in Taiwan, according to the prosecutors’ office.
The indictment matters because it shows how the scam economy has moved beyond victim-facing fraud and into asset accumulation, shell-company structures and cross-border laundering. The packet says the industry has become a major source of illicit income in Southeast Asia, using trafficked workers to deceive victims around the world through fake romances and bogus cryptocurrency investments. Taiwan’s case ties that broader pattern to concrete assets and named defendants.
Chen himself had already become a prominent figure in the wider criminal probe. The packet says he was arrested and deported to China from Cambodia earlier this year, while the Prince Group had denied wrongdoing in a statement issued in November through a US law firm. The indictment now places Taiwanese legal pressure on a network that has already drawn scrutiny from multiple governments.
For Taiwan, the case is also a reminder that the reach of the scam industry is not confined to the places where call centres operate. The prosecution says financial flows, property purchases and luxury spending in Taiwan were part of the concealment effort. That makes the island both a target of the alleged laundering and a jurisdiction trying to claw back the proceeds.
