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A sanctioned senior executive with the Prince Group used an intermediary company to purchase a multimillion-dollar home in a wealthy suburb of California, United States, according to corporate and property records.
Bo Lei, a former director at scam-linked Prince Group companies, is a Chinese-born businessman who obtained Cambodian citizenship in 2018. Company and property records from California show him using a U.S.-registered company to buy a $3.7 million home in California’s Orange County in 2020, which is the first Prince-linked real estate asset reported in the U.S. Current listings have the house valued at over $5.7 million.
The purchase mirrors similar large property investments by Prince associates in the United Kingdom, Japan, Taiwan and Singapore. Prince Group Chairman Chen Zhi, who was extradited to China earlier this year and faces a slew of criminal charges in Chinese courts, owned at least 19 properties in London with co-sanctioned associates, including a commercial building, and another luxury apartment in Tokyo.
Bo Lei appears to have used a chain of companies to purchase the California property. He is listed as registered agent and chief executive of TZHY LLC, a limited liability company incorporated in California in 2020 that lists its business as “property management”. He used the company that same year to buy the five-bedroom home in Laguna Niguel, a seaside suburb in Orange County, according to deed and corporate filings reviewed by CamboJA News.
A request for comment sent to the email listed on the company’s website went unanswered. Additional requests sent to emails and phone numbers listed for Bo Lei or companies he directs in Cambodia also went unanswered. Cayenne Kuang, the realtor who brokered the purchase, did not respond to a request for comment.
The trail leads back to Prince Huan Yu (USA) Group Inc., incorporated in California in 2020, where Bo Lei is listed as chief executive and sole director in the company’s most recent filing from September 2025. The company lists its business activities as “interior decoration” and “project management,” and shares its name with the Prince Huan Yu network of entities in Cambodia that were also sanctioned by the U.S.
Prince Huan Yu (USA) shares the same address as another company, Realty YKP Group Holdings Inc., according to its incorporation filing from 2020. It lists Bo Lei as CEO and CFO of the company. Corporate records also show Realty YKP as a registered member for TZHY.
Bo Lei has listed the Laguna Niguel property as his own address in filings for TZHY, the records show – even as the house deed lists the LLC, not him personally, as owner.
Property records for the house also show the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) initiated a hold on a bank account linked to TZHY in November 2025. The account was used by the company to make monthly homeowner association fees payments, which stopped in mid-November last year and one month after Bo Lei was sanctioned.
“Account Frozen/Returned per OFAC on ACH…9019,” reads an entry from November 17, 2025.
Following that entry, TZHY made no further payments to the homeowners association aside from a single $300 check. As of May 2026, the company owes the association $7,765 in outstanding dues.
The U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
OFAC named Bo Lei in October 2025 as part of sweeping sanctions targeting Prince Group over allegedly running vast online scam operations that relied on forced labor and generated billions of dollars in illicit proceeds. Prince Group has denied wrongdoing.
According to the designation, Bo Lei – whose name is sometimes rendered in Western order as Lei Bo – previously served as chairman of Prince Huan Yu Real Estate (Cambodia) Group and oversaw construction of the Golden Fortune Resorts World Co. Ltd. scam compound in Kandal province’s Sampov Poun city, which has been linked to forced labor and scam operations.
The 48-year-old, from Chongqing, China, was also a co-director with Chen Zhi at Prince Huan Yu Real Estate. Chen has been accused of holding roughly $15 billion in bitcoin linked to scam proceeds, which the Justice Department seized as part of a sweeping indictment against him.
OFAC and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
