PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — A senior official at Cambodia’s Interior Ministry said Wednesday his ministry will cooperate with South Korea over the death of a South Korean student allegedly kidnapped and tortured by a criminal gang in Cambodia.
The body of 22-year-old Park Min-ho was discovered in August in a pickup truck near Bokor Mountain in southern Kampot province. Authorities said he died of a cardiac arrest after being tortured and beaten.
The student had reportedly told his family he was visiting Cambodia for an exhibition in July. Shortly after arriving he was kidnapped by a criminal gang who demanded a $35,000 ransom, South Korean media reported.
On Wednesday South Korea’s Foreign Ministry issued a travel ban for parts of Cambodia including Bokor Mountain in Kampot province, as well as the towns of Bavet and Poipet, on Cambodia’s border with Vietnam and Thailand.
The move follows a surge in cases involving South Korean nationals that has caused growing concerns over cross-border crime and weak law enforcement cooperation between Cambodia and South Korea. Seoul has pressed for stronger cooperation to tackle cases of online scams, kidnappings, and violence targeting Korean nationals.
Cambodia’s National Police said Monday that three men, identified as Li Xingpeng, 35, Zhu Renzhe, 43, and Liu Haoxing, 29, have been charged with murder and online fraud. Police are searching for two other Chinese men on suspicion of the killing.
Touch Sokhak, a spokesman for Cambodia’s interior ministry, said officials will work with South Korea’s government on the prevention of crimes including scams and online gambling.
He said that at least 80 South Koreans were rescued and placed under police protection after a recent crackdown on cyberscam criminals.
Last week authorities also arrested 80 suspects of seven nationalities — most of them Chinese — during a crackdown on a large-scale online fraud operation at an office complex building in Phnom Penh.
Interior Minister Sar Sokha said earlier this month that at least 15,000 foreigners involved in online crimes have been deported from Cambodia over the past two years.
The United Nations and other agencies have estimated that cyber scams, most of them originating from Southeast Asia, earn international criminal gangs billions of dollars annually. The cybercriminals feign friendship or tout phony investment opportunities to cheat targets around the world.
The U.S. government has seized more than $14 billion in bitcoin and charged the founder of a Cambodian conglomerate in a massive cryptocurrency scam, accusing him and unnamed co-conspirators of exploiting forced labor to dupe would-be investors and using the proceeds to purchase yachts, jets and a Picasso painting.
In an indictment unsealed Tuesday, Brooklyn federal prosecutors charged Prince Holding Group chairman Chen Zhi with wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy.
Chen was the “mastermind behind a sprawling cyberfraud empire,” Assistant Attorney General John Eisenberg said. U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella called it “one of the largest investment fraud operations in history.”
Cambodia urges a fair process as US and UK pursue Prince Group’s Chen Zhi in a global scam case
Cambodia’s government said Wednesday it hopes the U.S. and Britain have sufficient evidence in their pursuit of Prince Holding Group and its Chairman Chen Zhi, after both governments imposed coordinated sanctions accusing the Cambodian conglomerate of running massive online scams and using forced labor.
Cambodia’s Interior Ministry spokesman Touch Sokhak said Prince Holding Group has met all legal requirements to operate in Cambodia and has been treated no differently than other major companies investing in the country. He also said the Cambodian citizenship given to China native Chen was in accordance with the law.
Touch Sokhak said Cambodia will cooperate if there is a formal request backed by evidence. “We do not protect individuals who violate the law,” he said, but stressed that Cambodia’s government itself does not accuse Prince Holding Group or Chen Zhi of wrongdoing.
“I don’t have much to say about the American and British authorities’ seeking to arrest him, but first, we just hope that there will be arguments and sufficient proof to put against him,” Touch Sokhak told The Associated Press.
The U.S. Treasury Department and U.K. Foreign Office on Tuesday announced joint sanctions against Chen and his conglomerate, accused of being a transnational criminal network that has defrauded victims worldwide and exploited trafficked workers across Southeast Asia.
It came after U.S. authorities seized more than $14 billion in bitcoin and charged Chen, 38, with wire fraud and money laundering conspiracies. Chen was accused of sanctioning violence against workers, authorizing bribes to foreign officials and using his other businesses, such as online gambling and cryptocurrency mining, to launder illicit profits. U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella called it “one of the largest investment fraud operations in history.”
In London, British authorities froze Chen’s British businesses and assets, including a 12 million euro ($13.9 million) mansion in North London, a 100 million euro ($116 million) office building in the City of London, and multiple luxury flats across the capital.
John Wojcik, a senior threat researcher for Infoblox, who previously tracked cybercrime in Southeast Asia for the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, said the joint U.S.-British action marked a major strike against one of the largest cybercriminal and money laundering enterprises in Southeast Asia, but that more must be done.
“Unless law enforcement and industry partners can trace and dismantle their online infrastructure — the domains, hosting and payment rails that sustain them — these networks will rebrand, retool, and continue to scale,” Wojcik said.
Chen remains at large. If convicted in the U.S., he faces up to 40 years in prison. Prince Holding Group has previously denied involvement in scam operations and has not publicly responded to the latest allegations.
The two governments allege that Chen’s network operated scam compounds in Cambodia that used trafficked foreign nationals to run online “romance” and cryptocurrency investment scams. Victims were tricked into investing life savings in fake trading platforms, while trafficked workers were forced to carry out the frauds under threat of torture.
Mark Taylor, who formerly worked on human trafficking issues in Cambodia for the non-profit Winrock International, said that Chen was embedded in the Cambodian elite and “well protected” by the government, showing “the larger role that Cambodia has played as a safe center for this online scamming to prosper.” Chen was formerly a personal advisor to Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet.
“Cambodia is the physical location where a lot of it operates, but it’s also the money laundering center for the entire region,” Taylor said
Independent research group Cyber Scam Monitor has documented more than 200 online scamming centers and casinos in Cambodia alone, based on first-hand accounts from former scam workers, field surveys and media reports.
“For Cambodia, we will cooperate in every way possible with other countries where there is sufficient evidence,” Touch Sokhak said.
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