America's New Enemy: The Chinese Crypto Cartel Buying States to Fight the U.S.

Welcome to Whale Hunting, where we protect our sources and stand up to the powers that be in our effort to illuminate the hidden worlds of money and power.

Our readers will know that we've engaged in an intense investigation into the story of fraud and money laundering that all started with the case of Benjamin Mauerberger. After months of investigation across six countries and interviews with more than fifty sources, we're publishing our most detailed account yet of how Mauerberger and the Chinese mafia infiltrated Thailand's government — representing the most complete case of state capture in modern history and a new threat to American security.

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This summer, a mysterious South African called Benjamin Mauerberger waited outside a meeting of Thailand's cabinet. As the cabinet filed out, Mauerberger cornered Finance Minister Pichai Chunhavajira in a private room. Although a foreigner, Mauerberger had become a commanding figure in Thailand's government and he was enraged that Pichai had dared to block his policy. As the debate got heated, Mauerberger whispered to the minister, with an undercurrent of menace: "I outrank you."

At 47, Mauerberger is a towering, broad-shouldered presence who once could have been mistaken for a boy band member. But the years have exacted a toll: deep lines cut below his eyes, his hair is in retreat, and a constant, visible twitchiness betrays decades spent dodging global arrest. He moves with a powerful, coiled tension, juggling multiple burner phones as he dominates his Asian associates. When one businessman pressed him for a surname, Mauerberger offered a charmed but empty smile: "Just Ben."

Mauerberger is a central node in what U.S. officials call the Chinese mafia — a sprawling, decentralized network of criminal organizations that the United States Institute of Peace estimates generates $64 billion annually through cyber-enabled fraud. The Federal Trade Commission believes the true figure, accounting for unreported losses, may approach $200 billion — more than the annual revenues of Ford, Bank of America, or General Motors. The victims are ordinary Americans: retirees, small investors and lonely professionals who fall for fake crypto schemes and romance scams, often losing their life savings. Some have killed themselves.

The money flows to prison-like scam compounds across Southeast Asia, where trafficked workers spend 17-hour days calling cell phone numbers in the U.S., then gets laundered through banks, shell companies, and complicit politicians.

"The scam centers are creating a generational wealth transfer from Main Street America into the pockets of Chinese organized crime," U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro said in November.

Mauerberger's infiltration of Thailand's government — not just police and politicians, but the Prime Minister's inner circle, army generals, and financial regulators — represents the most complete case of state capture in modern history, and the clearest illustration of why this new enemy is far harder to fight than the American Mafia of the 20th century.

Starting last year, Mauerberger, who also goes by "Ben Smith," began to act as an unofficial Thai government minister. He bragged to friends in Bangkok that he controlled $4 billion in assets: a $20 million Aman penthouse opposite Trump Tower in New York; a $100 million super yacht called "Wanderlust"; a $80 million Airbus private jet. He showered gifts on Thai politicians — millions of dollars in crypto, luxury cars, financing for political parties — and secretly acquired a controlling stake in a Thai investment bank. One of his key initiatives was an official government blueprint for Thailand's digital economy, although his name appeared nowhere on the document. On the surface, it was an ambitious plan to make Thailand a leader in crypto. In reality, Mauerberger needed to secure rapid, high-volume conduits to move billions of dollars in illicit cash — and fast.

He was right to be paranoid. In 2023, a CIA agent in Bangkok began tracking Mauerberger's unexplained fortune. Following the money back to Cambodia — a neighboring state long ceded to China's influence — the agent came to understand that Mauerberger was not a mere money launderer but an important player in a criminal network the size and power of which the world has rarely seen. The agent wanted to build a formal case file, but his supervisor dismissed the lead. Mauerberger, the boss concluded, was not dangerous. When the agent rotated out of Bangkok, he didn't even leave files for his replacement. The trail went cold — for a time.

Fighting this Chinese mafia was going to be more complex than the 1990s takedown of the American Mafia. In the 1970s and 80s, John Gotti's ruthless economic capture peaked by buying off local police and politicians to control industries like construction and waste disposal. His organization, however, was a rigid pyramid: when Gotti's trusted lieutenant, Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano, flipped, the entire centralized structure collapsed. That was the playbook — flip one guy, get the whole pyramid. But the new enemy is structurally different. Fueled by billions in crypto, these networks — actually hundreds of loosely interconnected groups, and their intersection with crypto money launderers like Mauerberger — have subverted not just local cops, but entire sovereign governments: Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar. The Italian Mafia was a single octopus with a central brain and many arms. This is a school of octopuses swimming in the same direction — sometimes coordinating, sometimes independent, but impossible to decapitate.

Americans don't even see the threat coming. We learned to fear the Mafia through a century of myth-making — The Godfather, Goodfellas, The Sopranos. We know the don, the consigliere, the code of omertà. But there is no Chinese Corleone, no triad saga that crossed over into the American imagination. Hong Kong made great gangster films; Hollywood remade the best of them, Infernal Affairs, as The Departed — and erased the Chinese entirely. The threat is invisible not just because it's decentralized, but because we have no story for it.

This account of Mauerberger's rise — and the criminal network he served — is based on interviews with more than fifty people across Thailand, Cambodia, Singapore, Dubai, the United Kingdom, and the United States, including former associates, law enforcement officials, and victims. It draws on hundreds of corporate records, financial documents, internal communications, and photographs. Mauerberger, through a statement, has denied any wrongdoing and called this reporting a "relentless smear campaign." He denied any connection to Cambodian money laundering, call-center scams, or human trafficking. "I have never had and will never have any connection to such activities," he said.