After losing work during the post‑COVID downturn, a woman identified in interviews only as “Maya” accepted what she thought was an overseas job. Instead, investigators for the US House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party say she was recruited to Cambodia, confined inside a fortified compound and forced to run online investment scams under threat of violence.
Her story appears in a new committee report, Crime, Corruption, and Power: CCP‑Linked Transnational Crime and the Rise of a Distributed Threat to U.S. National Security, which uses Maya as one of several survivor accounts to illustrate a wider phenomenon: sprawling, transnational scam ecosystems that investigators say now operate across Southeast Asia and beyond.
What began as scattered online fraud, gambling and trafficking operations has, the report finds, converged into a durable criminal ecosystem. At the center of the networks are “pig‑butchering” scams—long, highly manipulative campaigns in which targets are emotionally groomed over weeks or months and then persuaded to invest in bogus cryptocurrency or investment platforms. These schemes are described as among the fastest‑growing and most financially destructive cybercrimes targeting Americans. Victims have reportedly lost retirement savings, home equity and other life assets; many are subsequently approached by impostor “recovery” agents demanding more money. The investigators also document severe psychological harms, including depression, isolation and cases linked to suicide.
The committee reports that Americans lose more than $10 billion each year to PRC‑origin scam networks operating from the region. It cites allegations that more than 150,000 people have been trafficked into Cambodian scam operations alone, with victims coming from more than 80 countries. Investigators label the problem a “polycrime” issue: cyber fraud, human trafficking, corruption, weak borders and money laundering all interconnected.
Four permissive conditions, the report argues, have enabled these networks to scale: enforcement pressure that displaces criminal groups into permissive jurisdictions; political protection from local elites; dual‑use infrastructure such as casinos, telecoms and real estate; and shadow financial systems made up of underground banks, shell companies and crypto brokers. Private‑sector infrastructure—from banks and crypto exchanges to messaging platforms, cloud services, online advertising and satellite links—has become deeply entangled in the operations, often unwittingly enabling abuse at scale.
Although the committee repeatedly uses the label “CCP‑linked,” it stops short of alleging direct Beijing control over offshore compounds. Instead, investigators describe a distributed criminal ecosystem in which transnational networks, selective law‑enforcement actions in China, host‑state corruption, illicit finance channels and private infrastructure reinforce each other.
Cambodia and Myanmar are highlighted as primary case studies. In Cambodia, the report alleges that scam compounds, underground banking and illicit finance became embedded within development projects and political protection networks. Myanmar’s situation is described as a conflict‑embedded model: the 2021 military coup intensified grey zones and created protection markets in militia‑controlled border enclaves where offenders operate with impunity.
A central figure singled out by the committee is Chen Zhi, a Chinese‑born, Cambodian‑naturalized businessman and founder of Prince Holding Group. Report investigators trace Chen’s rise into Cambodia’s political and business elite, saying he served as a cabinet‑level adviser to former prime minister Hun Sen and current prime minister Hun Manet while presiding over a highly visible corporate empire. Between 2024 and 2025, journalists and researchers intensified scrutiny of alleged links between Prince Holding and scam operations, trafficking and illicit finance. On October 14, 2025, US authorities announced the seizure of $15 billion in bitcoin tied to Chen’s network—described by investigators as the largest forfeiture action in US history—and followed with a federal indictment and joint US‑UK sanctions targeting 117 individuals. Chen was later extradited to China in January 2026. The committee says his case “crystallizes the model” but warns that removing a single patron did not dismantle the broader ecosystem.
The report also traces variations in how states respond. The Philippines is presented as an example of reversal: offshore gaming operators proliferated under Rodrigo Duterte, peaking around 2019, but the sector was largely shut down by the end of 2024 under President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. Other episodes, such as the Alice Guo case—an alleged local official implicated in falsifying identity records and linked to a raided trafficking compound—illustrate the risk of political penetration by criminal networks.
Investigators say the networks are expanding beyond Southeast Asia. Sri Lanka is identified as an emerging node in South Asia. Several Pacific island states, including Palau, Vanuatu, the Marshall Islands and the Solomon Islands, are flagged as vulnerable zones where comparatively small illicit capital inflows can produce outsized political influence. Nigeria, Namibia, Peru and Dubai are also singled out as connected or emerging operational hubs, with Dubai described as functioning as both a laundering and operational center.
The committee emphasizes that this is not only a cybercrime problem. Its strategic concern is the convergence of consumer fraud, human trafficking, illicit finance and geopolitics into a distributed threat that undermines governance and harms citizens in many countries. To counter it, the report recommends stepped‑up interagency coordination within the US government; increased pressure on foreign elites and protection networks; closer cooperation with allies; support for governance and resilience in vulnerable states; and deeper engagement with private‑sector infrastructure providers to detect and disrupt scam operations.
The committee’s findings portray a complex, multi‑layered criminal ecosystem that exploits weak institutions, complicit actors and global financial and communications infrastructure. Survivor accounts like Maya’s put a human face on the figures and seizures, underscoring both the scale of the financial losses and the significant human toll behind the headlines.