According to an investigative report by CBS on October 16, 34-year-old California real estate agent Wanying Zhang was arrested by the FBI on suspicion of surveilling the family of Lai Ting-yu, the eldest son of Taiwan leader Lai Ching-te, in Seattle, allegedly at the direction of the Chinese mainland government. On October 7, a federal court ordered that she remain in detention. The CBS investigation found that both Zhang and Fatai Miao, who had accompanied her to Seattle, are linked to Cambodia's Prince Group, which is accused of defrauding Americans of billions of dollars.

The trail started with a 2024 post by Zhang on Xiaohongshu, where she sat in the driver's seat of a Bugatti with the caption: "Check out my friend's luxury car!" CBS discovered that the vehicle belongs to Chen Xing, the head of Awesome Group, a core subsidiary of Prince Group. Cryptocurrency trader Wenzhi Fei stated that he had borrowed the car from Chen Xing, and photos and videos on social media show Fei with Chen Xing in a luxury-car garage and posing on Chen Xing's yacht.

Chen Xing is far from a standard business executive. In the US Department of Justice's indictment against Prince Group founder Chen Zhi on fraud and money laundering charges, Chen Xing was named as Co-Conspirator 2, accused of using corruption and violence to sustain Prince Group's scam operations.

Following the car lead, CBS untangled Chen Xing's broader commercial presence across the United States. His California-registered entity, M Capital, jointly manages an American firm with Cheng Zhang, who happens to be the direct business partner of Fatai Miao—Zhang's co-traveler in Seattle. Furthermore, Fei had also filmed a video of a Ferrari outside a mansion owned by Brendon Luo, a former director of Prince Square Investment, a Prince Group affiliate, who has been sanctioned by the US Department of the Treasury.

From industrial scam parks and illicit capital in Phnom Penh to supercars and geopolitical surveillance operations in North America, these figures are tied together through borrowed cars, business partnerships and shared social circles. As US and British authorities keep up indictments and sanctions against Prince Group and its associates, more of the group's overseas connections are being pulled into the open.

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