‘Phone scam kingpin’ has London properties worth more than £100,000,000 seized in bitcoin bust

The UK has seized the assets of two Chinese men accused of running ‘industrial scale’ scams from Southeast Asia.

Chen Zhi and Qiu Wei Ren were both added to the UK sanctions list on Tuesday as part of an international crackdown on fraud, along with a series of businesses linked to them.

Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said the men were the ‘masterminds’ behind ‘horrific scam centres’ that used forced labour in Cambodia and Myanmar to trick victims across the world.

Chen’s UK assets include a £12 million mansion near Primrose Hill, in London, and 10 Fenchurch Street, an office building in the City of London bought through one of his companies for £95 million in 2020.

Qiu’s assets include seven flats in the CentrePoint Tower at the end of Oxford Street, and 10 flats in the Nine Elms development near the new US embassy in south-west London, in one of the buildings that holds up the development’s ‘Sky Pool’.

All of the properties are estimated to be worth well over £100,000,000 together.

Chen led a network of scam centres in Cambodia and Myanmar that used forced labour to trick victims across the world into handing over their money through fake romantic relationships and fraudulent cryptocurrency schemes.

The people working in these centres are often foreign nationals lured into working there with the promise of legitimate jobs and then trapped and forced to carry out the scams under threat of torture.

Through his company, The Prince Group, Chen is said to have built casinos and compounds used as scam centres, as well as laundering the proceeds.

Both men were born in China but hold Cambodian and Cypriot citizenship. Chen also holds Vanuatu citizenship, while Qiu holds Hong Kong citizenship.

Cooper added: ‘Together with our US allies, we are taking decisive action to combat the growing transnational threat posed by this network – upholding human rights, protecting British nationals and keeping dirty money off our streets.’

Also sanctioned were Ing Dara and Zhu Zhongbiao, Cambodian directors of the Jin Bei Group; Chinese national Lei Bo; and Cambodian national Guy Chhay.

Both Lei and Guy are directors of the Uni More Group, a company linked to the scam network that has also been sanctioned along with the Cambodian Heng Xin Real Estate Group.

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