In the midst of an epidemic of antisemitism in the US and the world, the recent indictment of the Cambodian tycoon Chen Zhi for massive cryptocurrency fraud is a striking reminder-for those who need it--that Jews are not the prime movers behind such crimes. Chen Zhi, Chairman of the Prince Holding Group and economic adviser to Cambodian Senate President Hun Sen, orchestrated the widespread scam, fueled by brutal exploitation.
His empire relied on trafficked workers imprisoned in guarded compounds, where enslaved telephone operators were beaten, tortured, and forced to defraud victims worldwide of their life savings. These operators carried out industrial-scale “pig butchering” scams, a term that refers to “fattening up” victims with flattery and pretended relationships-often over social media and messaging apps-before draining their life savings through fake investments.
On October 14, 2025, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted Zhi for wire fraud and money laundering and seized approximately $15 billion in Bitcoin.
Zhi currently remains at large in Cambodia.
This scandal shatters the antisemitic myth that Jews are the root of global financial manipulation. It exposes how real criminal empires operate, often with state complicity and at devastating human costs.
Yet, Jews are the ones vilified in online forums and political rhetoric. And, as ever, the irrational denouncements and conspiratorial thinking functions as a tool of deflection for the real culprits. In Zhi's case, while antisemites spin tales of the Rothschild family and Jewish bankers controlling the world, a person with no ties to Judaism is behind the largest crypto fraud ever uncovered.
Jewish people have historically been scapegoated for societal problems, allowing those truly responsible to escape blame. In medieval Europe during the bubonic plague, Jews were accused of poisoning wells while the actual cause-a bacterial pandemic spread by fleas-was ignored. This shifted focus from ineffective rulers and their ignorance of public health systems.
In 19th-century Russia, economic hardship led to pogroms where Jews were blamed for exploiting peasants through usury, effectively masking tsarist oppression and the legacy of serfdom.
The notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion, fabricated by the tsar's secret police, further fueled antisemitism, and was even used in the US by figures like Henry Ford to divert attention from industrial exploitation and labor unrest.
The most horrific example is the Holocaust under Nazi Germany, where Jews were scapegoated for Germany's post-World War I economic collapse and the Treaty of Versailles' humiliations. Adolf Hitler and his regime propagated myths of a ewish "stab in the back" and financial control, enabling the genocide of six million Jews as the Nazis plundered and committed atrocities in Europe and Russia.
German justice inspector Friedrich Kellner documented the Nazis’ genocidal actions in his diary and noted, “The racist campaign against the Jews is to give the people a scapegoat so they will not uncover the truth: that the men in the Nazi Party are the originators of the war and atrocities. A great number of mentally inert people succumb to this cunning deception.”
In modern times, conspiracy theories about Jewish influence in global finance have reached almost epic proportions. Online echo chambers toss around baseless claims of Jewish cabals, and the antisemitic tropes are repeated and amplified by celebrities and influencers-Joaquin Phoenix, Roger Walters, Susan Sarandon, Javier Bardem, to name a few--leading to a worldwide normalization of absurd and groundless hatred.
In a world where Kanye West sells swastika-themed merchandise, and Greta Thunberg enthusiastically supports Hamas murderers, the truth becomes a casualty.
Friedrich Kellner’s diary is a moral compass in times of distortion. When antisemitism under Nazi rule was state doctrine, Kellner wrote, “The Jews are no worse than other people. It is just that these Nazi hypocrites don’t want to see the beam in their own eyes.”
That is no less true today, as lies and memes and wicked posts about Jewish control are wantonly batted about in digital form on our social--but highly uncivil--media.
People need to acknowledge and resist the seduction of scapegoating and embrace historical clarity. The Zhi case is a reminder that evil wears many faces, and that vigilance must be universal.
Robert Scott Kellner, a navy veteran, is a retired English professor who taught at the University of Massachusetts and Texas A & M University. He is the grandson of the German justice inspector and diarist Friedrich Kellner and is the editor and translator of My Opposition: The Diary of Friedrich Kellner--A German against the Third Reich, Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom, 2020.