The Trillion Dollar Scam King Gangster Taking Over

The Underworld Podcast

True Crime, Documentary, History, Society & Culture

4.7 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 31 March 2026

⏱️ 77 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

When fleets of young Chinese men arrived in the tiny, Pacific nation of Palau in 2018, authorities wondered why they’d eschewed the archipelago’s pristine shores and coral reefs for a handful of tumbledown buildings on the edge of Koror, its biggest town. It wouldn’t take long for the story to unfold. These men were the foot soldiers in a new crime wave hitting Palau: digital scammers at the sharp end of a trillion-dollar empire run by the world’s richest gangster, and orchestrated by one of China’s most infamous Triad kingpins. As Palauan cops dismantled the operation, they discovered it had more than a little to do with their nation’s recognition of Taiwan — and Beijing’s attempt to use organized crime to bring Asia’s states to heel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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1:06.9	It's 2018 in the city of Coror, commercial centre of Palat, a tiny archipelago nation in the Pacific Ocean.
1:13.6	Once an imperial Japanese armour's headquarters, bombed into dust by B-52s and beloved by World War II shipwreck hunters, the little Coror, home to just 13,000 people, now finds itself
1:20.2	on the front lines of a strange and very different war, and this one is being led by a wave
1:26.2	of international gangsters.
1:28.6	You see, as recently as 2015, Palau was enjoying a tourist boom.
1:33.0	That year, around 100,000 Chinese flocked to the island, palm quilted and surrounded by
1:38.9	gin-clear shimmering magoons, throwing their cash at bars, cafes and hotels, and stuffing the coffers
1:45.6	of a country whose entire population would barely fill out an NBA arena. Then, suddenly, the boom
1:52.2	is over. Plains grow empty. Within a couple of years, there are only 30,000 Chinese tourists in Palau.
1:59.0	That is a lot of money, God. Perhaps Chinese people stop liking pristine beaches and coral reefs,
2:04.6	or perhaps it's got something more to do with the fact that Little Palau,
2:08.6	this collection of islands some 500 miles east of the Philippines,
2:12.6	is only one of a few countries in the world that has diplomatic ties
2:15.6	not with the People's Republic of China,
	...

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