A Chinese Spy Suspect, a $3M Bugatti—and a Trail to Cambodia's Scam Empire

Friends, the Zhang Wanying case runs deep. When she was first arrested, everyone thought it was just an ordinary espionage case. But over the past two weeks, American media outlets have pulled out court document after court document, and the prosecution has been continuously revealing more shocking details in court. The further you look into it, the more wrong it seems. Zhang Wanying once posted a photo on Xiaohongshu sitting in the driver's seat of a Bugatti supercar. The owner of this car as a henchman of the Prince Group, a Cambodian telecom fraud syndicate. The man who accompanied her to Seattle to keep watch was her lover, and this lover's company is registered at a $4.5 million dollar mansion in Irvine. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration says that this house is the place where Mexican drug cartels hide their cash. As for Zhang Wanying herself, she made $190,000 running an underground bank. How could a CCP agent get mixed up with telecom scammers and Mexican drug cartels. Just how deep does this rabbit hole go? As I dug deeper, I discovered a documentary recently aired by Al Jazeera about an undercover investigation into Cambodian telecom fraud syndicates. It perfectly fills in the most important piece of this dark web puzzle. Today, we're going to start with that Bugatti and peel back the layers one by one. Believe me, you need to watch until the very end of today's episode. You'll find it all becomes clear. In 2024, Zhang Wanying posted a photo on Xiaohongshu of herself sitting in the driver's seat of a Bugatti. This car model only had 500 units made worldwide, costing about $3 million dollars each, to put it bluntly. It's basically driving a mansion down the road. The caption she wrote was quite casual, check out my friend's luxury car. This photo, meant to show off wealth, was deleted just this week. Why delete it? Let's trace it and see who this car actually belongs to. The person who usually drives this car is a Chinese cryptocurrency trader who calls himself a poker gambler on social media. A CBS reporter in the U.S. tracked him down, and he said, This car isn't mine. I borrowed it. Borrowed from whom? From a friend. He even went on to praise this friend. He described him as a generous gentleman. So, just how wealthy is this generous gentleman? You can find videos online of this trader and his friend standing in a garage filled with limited-edition supercars. There are also photos of this trader posing on a 71-foot yacht, which also belongs to this friend. This friend's name is Chen Sokri. You might not be familiar with it, but the company behind it is known to everyone, the Prince Group. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the Prince Group is one of the largest transnational criminal organizations in Asia. They operate at least 10 cyber scam compounds in Cambodia. These compounds are surrounded by high walls topped with barbed wire, holding thousands of people who were lured there under false pretenses. with a particularly large number of them being Chinese citizens. Every day, these people sit in front of computers running scams. They start by making friends with you online, showing concern and care, chatting for months to build a relationship, and then they lure you into a cryptocurrency platform, telling you to invest and letting you make a little money first. See, you're making money, they say. So you invest more and more. Once all your savings are in, they shut down the platform, block you, and close up shop. The classic pig butchering scam. The U.S. Department of Justice has accused the Prince Group of using this method to swindle Americans out of at least $15 billion, and the U.S. has even confiscated about $15 billion worth of Bitcoin from them. This is the largest seizure in the history of the U.S. Department of Justice. On January 6th of this year, the boss of the Prince Group, Chen Xi, in the indictment filed in the U.S. against Chen Xi after his arrest in Cambodia, there is an unnamed co-conspirator number two, and that person is Chen Sokri. The indictment states that he used corruption and violence to maintain the Prince Group's dominance in the cyber scam industry. He also bought a $3 million yacht as a bribe for a foreign government official. To put it bluntly, this guy is the enforcer for the Prince Group, the person who handles the dirty work for the boss. So how did the luxury car belonging to the number two figure of the Prince Group all the way over in Cambodia end up in Zhang Wanying's social media feed? You might say maybe it was just a friend of a friend borrowing it for a photo, a coincidence? Well, it's not that simple. Let's look at the second thread. There is a company in California called Big Boat. This company is jointly managed by two parties. One is a company controlled by Chen Sokri and the other is a person named Chen Jiang. Who is this Chen Jiang? He is the business partner of Miao Fatai, who is Zhang Wanying's lover. This Miao Fatai is the same accomplice who went to Seattle with Zhang Wanying to tail Lai Qingde's son. He was the one who took the photos at the time, and the credit card used to book the hotel was also his. Miao Fatai is Zhang Wanying's lover, and as for Miao Fatai and this Chen Jiang, the two of them, they opened a company together. It was a construction development company, so this connection is the business of Zhang Wanying's lover. The business partner of the partner is Chen Jiang, and the Bugatti he drives, even though he is usually a crypto trader, also belongs to Chen Jiang. These are two completely different lines that eventually converged on the same person. This person is Chen Jiang, a henchman for the Prince Group. You say they aren't in the same circle, but would someone be able to borrow a multi-million dollar Bugatti? There's another detail that's even more chilling. That crypto trader who usually drives the Bugatti posted a video online where he gets into a Ferrari parked in the driveway of a luxury mansion, and the owner of that mansion is someone who has been sanctioned by the U.S. Department of the Treasury. A member of the Prince Group? And this mansion? It's located in Yorba Linda, Orange County. And Orange County is the same county where Zhang Wenying works as a real estate agent in Irvine. So what do you think the relationship is between Zhang Wenying and the Prince Group? Do you feel it? The hair on your arms is standing up now. With that feeling in mind, let's take a look at this Miao Fatai. Who is the man in the FBI documents who accompanies Zhang Wanying to Seattle to tail someone? His name wasn't used. Instead, he was referred to by the code Individual One. However, the CPS later identified this Individual One as Miao Fatai, a 54-year-old living in Irvine. In the construction business, the FBI discovered that at the time of the incident, Zhang Wanying and Miao Fatai were still maintaining a romantic relationship. However, Zhang Wanying was a married woman. Her husband was also a real estate agent, and the two of them had young children, which is why the court denied her bail twice. The prosecutor said, If he would even deceive his own family, then where is his lover Miao Fatai now? He ran away. About three weeks ago, Miao Fatai bought a one-way ticket and flew back to China. A few days later, the FBI used a search warrant to break into his house in Irvine, but the house was already empty. His house is on a street in Irvine called New Season, has five bedrooms, and is worth $4.5 million. dollars. Miao Fatai's company was registered at this very mansion. And in the eyes of the DEA, this house is very familiar. On March 1st, 2023, a DEA agent was tailing a member of a money laundering ring and personally watched this member walk into this mansion carrying a heavy red hand bag. Court documents state that the person delivered a bag of U.S. dollar cash derived from illegal activities. In May 2023, a leader of this money laundering ring was arrested. As for him, he told the DEA at the time that most of the dollars we sold came from scams. Before 2020, he had also laundered drug money, but later he didn't dare to do it anymore. Why? Because it was too terrifying. If the money got lost, the Mexicans wouldn't let him off the hook. The details here are also key, specifically this sentence. Most of the money they sold came from scams. How should we understand this, and how does it work behind the scenes? Let me give you an example. Suppose there's a businessman in Shanghai, let's call him Boss Wang, who has 72 million RMB in his hands, and he wants to buy a $1 million house in Irvine for his child. Of course, houses in Irvine aren't just $1 million, but for the sake of easy calculation, let's just say $1 million. But the problem is, according to the CCP's official regulations, each person can only exchange $5,000 per year, so it would take him 20 years to exchange $1 million. dollars. By the time he's exchanged enough, the kids won't even need it anymore. So the official route is a dead end. What does he do? He finds Zhang Wenying. Zhang Wenying is a real estate agent selling houses in Irvine, and she's quite well known in the Chinese community for being able to get money out of China. So how does the operation work? First, Boss Wang transfers 7.2 million RMB plus the service fee into a bank account in mainland China designated by Zhang Wenying. A few days later, someone on the U.S. side transfers 1 million dollars into Boss Wang's home buying account. Note that this money was not wired from China. It was deposited by someone in the United States. On paper, it looks like the money was transferred from China to the United States. But the RMB still remains in China, and the U.S. dollars were originally in the U.S. as well. So what is the profit being made here? It's the transaction fees and the exchange rate spread. Now, the most critical part of this operation is that 1 million U.S. dollars deposited on the U.S. side. Whose money is it, and where did it come from? Just think about it. Who would be willing to hand over $1 million in cash in the U.S. in exchange for 7.2 million RMB in China? One source is the money scam syndicate Swindle from pig butchering scams in the U.S. It either ends up in U.S. accounts or gets turned into cash. The boss then has to find a way to get that money back to China. Some friends might wonder, why would the telecom fraud boss want to send the money to China? Well, actually, we'll uncover the answer to that question when we discuss Al Jazeera's undercover investigation later. Then there's another type, drug trafficking. If you deposit the cash you get from selling drugs into a bank, it'll be flagged immediately. And the raw materials drug traffickers use for their drugs are precisely purchased from China, which requires payment in RMB. I'm not making this up. This was discovered by the U.S. Department of Justice. After drug traffickers in the U.S. launder U.S. dollars and receive RMB in China, they use it to buy chemical raw materials for manufacturing fentanyl and methamphetamine and then ship the drugs to Mexico. In a previous indictment, prosecutors stated that in just one case, over 50 million U.S. dollars in drug proceeds flowed through Chinese underground banks. So that's how it works. In the end, all three parties get what they want. Boss Wang gets his million-dollar house in Irvine. The scammers and drug traffickers get their dirty money laundered. The money laundering rings and underground banks take their cut. Now, let's look at the big picture. For this chain to function, it needs two hands. One hand handles the supply, which means collecting that dirty cash in U.S. dollars, hiding it, and waiting to sell it. The stash house the DEA was targeting at the time was doing exactly that, and that house was Miao Fatai's mansion. And what about the other hand? It has to handle the clients, meaning finding buyers like Boss Wang, allowing them to acquire enough RMB in China. And this is exactly what the prosecution alleges Jiang Wanying was doing. The nodes connecting both sides are called underground banks in China, while in the United States, they would be classified as money laundering rings. The prosecution states that Jiang Wanying's underground bank made a profit of at least $190,000 over the two years from 2024 to 2025, and it is still bringing in money to this day. So you see, it's Miao Fatai handling the goods and Jiang Wanying handling the clients, those two people. They are lovers, but there's still one question that hasn't been cleared up here. The sports car Zhang Wanying drives is linked to scammers in Cambodia. Her lover's mansion is linked to the dirty money of scammers and drug lords, and she and her lover both work for the CCP. So would you say their money laundering is also a task assigned by the CCP? Or are they criminals themselves who are moonlighting as CCP spies? I'd like to ask you all, do you think their money laundering is part of the CCP's overseas operations, or is it separate from their intelligence-gathering activities? Are these criminal activities two separate and independent lines? If you think it's the former, type unified. If you think these two are unrelated and separate operations, type separate. So what is the answer to this question? Al Jazeera's undercover footage captured it. On October 10th, Al Jazeera's investigative program 101 East aired a 24-minute undercover documentary involving a few journalists. They posed as people from a large online gambling group in the Philippines, saying they wanted to come to Cambodia to find a new base. They worked their way up and eventually made contact with someone. Deng Pibing, Deng Pibing, people in the circle call him Brother Bing, is from Hunan. The billionaire obtained Cambodian citizenship in 2016. He owns the Shenhen Group, which was sanctioned by the UK in December 2023 for engaging in telecom fraud activities. However, in mainland China, this person is quite a prominent figure. According to reports from mainland China, his alma mater in Hunan even sent its vice president to Cambodia to visit him, and he was very generous at the time, donating 3 million U.S. dollars on the spot. This documentary is over 24 minutes long. I've posted the full version on my X account, and the link is pinned in the comments section. Those interested are welcome to check it out. Now, regarding the undercover investigation relevant to this episode, Deng's assistant mentioned that due to pressure from Beijing, there is a rule in the compound, no Chinese scams. What is a Chinese scam? It refers to scam operations specifically targeting Chinese people. They are not allowed to scam Chinese citizens. Honglei, or Martin as he prefers to be called, is a Chinese citizen who's been working for Deng since early 2022. We just- It's very simple. We are the landlords. He suggests they should buy rather than rent. We sell you the land and provide store facilities, including security and property management. We collect a protection fee while you handle all other operations. Martin tells them there's just one condition. Don't scam Chinese citizens. Some people... Talk to me about it when the time comes. I think if he tries to run a China scheme, I won't even let him talk. I won't even talk to him. The pressure from the Chinese government is immense. Yeah, whatever I bought, none of that was there. The pressure from the Beijing government is too great, so they can't run China schemes. What does this show? It shows that Beijing's reach extends deep into Cambodia's cyber scam parks. One word from Beijing and the park bosses have to comply. Why is that? Keep watching. We'll get to it later in the documentary. Deng Hai showed the undercover agent a video. It was filmed during Xi Jinping's visit to Cambodia in 2025. At that moment, there was a woman just a few steps away from Xi Jinping. Her name is Mani. A few feet from the Chinese leader is one of Deng's most trusted Cambodian employees, Tep Moni. She was at breakfast during our team's visit to Long Bay at Deng's casino party surrounded by illegal drugs. And at his isolated hilltop scam compound, She's also attended at least one meeting between Deng and former Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen. 101 East understands that Thiat Mani is a member of the bodyguard unit of the Cambodian National Police. The department is headed by Yim, the younger brother of Deng's alleged business partner, Yin Lihak. I am also his- Is he also your superior? Is it Guang's brother? His superior serves my brother, the store. I am the superior. Politically, he is the superior. Livestream videos confirmed. Chill! Mani was on duty at the airport during the Chinese president's arrival and departure from Cambodia. He's been involved in every handover. According to Duong, she left a strong impression on the Chinese who accompanied Xi during his visit. Then they pulled him aside and said, hey, can you be an undercover agent for us? It's just that, uh, the Chinese government hopes to have some people embedded within the Cambodian government, you know? That, it was really hard for me. because I definitely wouldn't let him do that kind of thing." In other words, the boss of the cyber fraud operation, who was managed by the Cambodian police unit specifically responsible for protecting Cambodian leaders, was actually called Big Brother, and he was even recruited by the Chinese Communist Party to be an undercover agent. This shows that the CCP wanted to plan an eye right next to the Cambodian leadership, and the path they chose was actually through a cyber fraud boss, as if they didn't have enough people already. In 2019, the Chinese People's Liberation Army personally approached Deng. Deng recalled that that year he was summoned to a hotel in Nansha, Guangzhou. Once inside the Nansha Hotel, they put our phones in plastic bags in the fridge to talk. They talked about a few things because they wanted to facilitate a partnership with us at the time. To the Dara Sakor. The person sitting across from him was from the Chinese military. They were discussing cooperation regarding the Dara Sakor International Airport to transport supplies to the Chinese military base in Djibouti, Africa. To provide some background here, Djibouti is in the northeast corner of Africa, guarding the exit to the Red Sea. That is where China's first overseas military base is located. Dara Sakor is the base for Deng Peibing's cyber-fraud operations in Koh Kong. The vast area where it is located is a massive Chinese-funded development project. At the time, they built a runway that was suspiciously long, capable of handling large aircraft. As the Chinese military wanted help sourcing goods in Cambodia for their base in the African nation of Djibouti, They provided logistical supplies for China's Djibouti military base. Seeking a closer overseas location for training, they established this site, which later proved crucial in their pandemic response. As early as 2020, the U.S. Department of the Treasury sanctioned the Chinese developer of this project. At the time, the U.S. Secretary of State also stated that there were credible reports indicating this site would be used to deploy the Chinese Communist Party's military forces. At this point, a telecom fraud boss has already become a partner of the PLA. Deng also mentioned an old friend, Shi Jijiang, the boss of Yatai New City, a major hub for telecom fraud in Myanmar, who was extradited from Thailand back to China last November. In 2024, Al Jazeera went to a Thai prison to interview him, and during that interview, Shi Jijiang admitted that he was working for the Chinese Ministry of State Security. His business was started under the orders of the Ministry of State Security. This time, when Deng was asked what he thought of Shi Jijiang's accusations, he said that when you are thinking about big things, When there are always people better than you and mountains higher than yours, you need to think clearly. The meaning is that we are all just characters in this script, and you shouldn't disrupt what the director has arranged. This statement is thought-provoking. Who is this director? This undercover investigation has several layers relevant to our topic today. First, Beijing demands that telecom fraud operators must not target Chinese citizens, which means Beijing has control over these fraud operators. Then, the CCP demands people from the industrial parks to act as spies against the Cambodian government. Furthermore, the PLA wants to cooperate with the park owners, using the park's territory. Finally, some park owners have even admitted that they were originally people from the CCP's Ministry of State Security. The business was set up for him by the Ministry of State Security, so who is the director behind all this? Do you still believe that behind the telecom fraud parks are just a few shady bosses acting on their own? What do you think? Leave a comment and let me know. And remember these connections. Now let's go back to Zhang Wanying and Miao Fatai. Let me ask you a question first. If the CCP wants to keep a spy in the U.S., how would they pay them? Wiring it directly into a bank account would be voluntarily exposing themselves. Bringing cash into the U.S.? Well, you have to declare any cash over $10,000. So the CCP must use money whose source cannot be traced and whose trail cannot be seen. What kind of money is untraceable? It's money from underground banks. RMB is hedged and circulated domestically, while U.S. dollars are delivered in advance within the U.S. The funds physically never need to cross borders, and no traces are left on the books. That is the kind of non-existent capital. Where is the largest source? It's in the cyber-scam parks in Cambodia and the underground vaults of Mexican drug cartels. At this point, the logic of interest on both ends aligns. On one end, you have the CCP's intelligence agencies, which need to support operatives overseas to carry out dirty work, but they can't use official accounts. On the other end, you have the cyber-scam parks, which have massive amounts of illicit, dirty money. One side lacks money and cover. The other has money and seeks protection. It would be strange if they didn't team up. How does this operate when it comes to Zhang Guanying and Miao Letai? Here is my assessment. Yes, friends, listen closely and see if you agree. This is a closed loop that goes from shielding funds to money laundering, and finally to intelligence. First, at the upper level, according to the U.S. Department of Justice's indictment against the Prince Group, the Prince Group utilized political influence to protect their scam operations from being cracked down on by law enforcement agencies in multiple countries. And of course, the most direct one is the crackdown by the government where the compound is located. This also includes the CCP's Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of State Security. The Department of Justice found that Prince Group executives bribed CCP officials. This was so they could get information in advance before law enforcement raids. Chen Ji even boasted that he had an arrangement with the CCP's Ministry of State Security, where as long as he paid, the Ministry of State Security would tip him off about law enforcement operations in advance. Furthermore, Deng Peibing received word just days before Chen Ji was arrested. He fled in advance, so who was tipping him off? That's not hard to guess. Furthermore, the illicit money that mid-level CCP state security officials receive as tribute from these cyber-scam compounds isn't shipped directly back to China. Instead, it's converted on the spot into operational funds for the CCP's overseas intelligence network. How is this done? The dirty money scammed from the United States by these cyber-scam networks is sent directly in the form of U.S. dollar cash or cryptocurrency to agents like Zhang Wanying and Miao Huatai. Once these operatives receive the money, they begin carrying out the intelligence missions the CCP has assigned them overseas. Because this intelligence funding is essentially black money that they were required to launder anyway, it means that Zhang Wanying and Miao Huatai were already destined to do this. In the process, they naturally expand their own underground money laundering networks, allowing them to launder even more dirty money for other cyber scammers. Finally, Zhang Wanying looks for buyers back in China to purchase real estate in the United States. This not only completes the laundering of the dirty money from cyber scams and their intelligence funding, but also settles these funds into what appear to be legitimate, high-end overseas assets. So these two individuals are by no means just greedy people working as part-time spies. Behind this lies an entire criminal closed loop funded by dirty money from cyber scams. It's a criminal closed loop that sustains the CCP's overseas intelligence network. Who is the mastermind behind this? It goes without saying. And who is footing the bill? It's those ordinary people who are defrauded, those Chinese citizens who are tricked and trapped in Cambodia to commit scams. It's like a gang boss who never needs to show his face. Underneath him, there are people running casinos, loan sharks, debt collectors, and errand runners. It looks like they're all doing their own thing. But every month, these casinos have to pay the boss. And in return, the boss ensures they aren't bothered. And when the boss needs something done, with just one word, everyone underneath has to listen. The money from the casinos is what the boss uses to support this group. If something goes wrong, the boss just says, oh, I don't know them, I'm not aware of it, and he can get off the hook. After Zhao Wanying was arrested, what did the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs say? They said they weren't aware of the situation. China has consistently opposed the hype surrounding so-called CCP spies. This is the dirt I've dug up. What do you think of this episode, friends? Does it sound a bit mind-bending? Have you been able to understand the entire network of operations behind this? If you've understood it, why not share your thoughts with me in the comments section? Do you like this type of program? If you enjoy my show, don't forget to give me a like before you leave. Dear friends, welcome to subscribe to Zen Viewpoint. And I also ask you to please forward and share this episode with more friends. Let more people understand how the CCP's Overseas Intelligence Network operates, as well as the relationship between the CCP and telecom scammers. And don't forget the super thanks feature. I'd like to thank you all in advance. Every interaction you helps, helps trigger YouTube's recommendation algorithm, allowing my hard work to be seen by more people this episode really took a lot of brain power so i hope you all like it all right wishing you all a happy weekend don't forget we'll be back at the same time tomorrow on Zen Viewpoint see you then bye