UK Treasury Turns Landlord: London Assets Frozen in Cambodia's 'Legendary' Scam Crackdown

The UK government has just served up some frosty sanctions to the operators behind Cambodia's infamous #8 Park scam compound and a crypto marketplace that's basically a shady supermarket for traffickers' stolen data. It's the regulatory equivalent of changing the locks.

Legend Innovation Co, helmed by director Eang Soklim, ran the #8 Park facility – thought to be Cambodia's biggest human warehouse, with a dubious capacity for up to 20,000 captives. The compound is tied to the Prince Group, whose boss Chen Zi got a one-way ticket to a Chinese jail earlier this year. Two of Chen's pals, Thet Li and Hu Xiaowei, also got their names added to the naughty list.

The net widens to ensnare Xinbi, a Southeast Asian crypto bazaar that deals in pilfered personal data and spy gear, and has moonlighted as a laundry service for North Korea's crypto heists. Blockchain sleuths at Elliptic estimate Xinbi has washed through over $19.7 billion – a figure that makes your average rug pull look like a parking fine.

Also getting the sanction stamp is BSquare Technology, the sister firm of the Prince-linked BYEX exchange, alongside a Myanmar-based triad boss and the wife of a Prince Group operator. It's a clean sweep of the usual suspects.

The immediate fallout? A few choice London properties are now on ice, joining a previously seized haul that includes a £100 million office block, two mansions, and even a helicopter. Because nothing says "ill-gotten gains" like a private chopper gathering dust in a government hangar.

A UK government statement dryly noted that scam centers across Southeast Asia are running sophisticated ops – from romance cons to industrial-scale fraud – to target UK victims. The new sanctions aim to "immobilise this scam network and its financial enablers," or in crypto terms, to rug-pull the rug-pullers.

Cambodia, meanwhile, has been on a deportation marathon, booting over 48,000 foreigners after raids on scam hubs and targeting around 2,500 compounds. This cleanup comes after serious side-eye from China, the US, and South Korea. China has been executing scam-kingpin CEOs, while the UK and US sanctioned the Prince Group last year, which led to the BYEX exchange closing its doors – presumably to everyone except the bailiffs.