Template:Did you know nominations/Prince Group
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Prince Group
- ... that the Prince Group, described by the US Department of Justice as a "sprawling cyber-fraud empire", has stakes in an airline and Cuban cigar distribution?
- Source: "Mr Chen, who remains at large, is accused of being the mastermind behind a "sprawling cyber-fraud empire" operating under his multi-national company, the Prince Group, said the US Department of Justice (DOJ)."[1]
"An airline that has become the first Cambodian company to attempt to list itself on a U.S. stock exchange has substantial ties to a notorious business conglomerate dogged by allegations of criminality"[2]
"Chen, through the Hong Kong-registered Asia Corporation, acquired a 50 percent stake in Habanos, the worldwide distributor of Cuban cigars, and subsequently leveraged this control to inflate market prices."[3]Asamboi (talk) 18:40, 26 October 2025 (UTC).
References
- General eligibility:
- New enough:
- Long enough:
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Policy compliance:
- Adequate sourcing:
- Neutral:
- Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:
- Other problems: - ?
Hook eligibility:
- Cited:
- Interesting:
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| QPQ: Done. |
Overall: 
Expanded from redirect and nominated within window. QPQ done; only one required. Copyvio Detector clear after I removed some unnecessary quotations from CNN. Three issues: (1) The hook is interesting, but it's not precisely accurate. The DOJ press release describes a sprawling cyber-fraud empire operating under the Prince Group umbrella
, which is not necessarily the same as saying the company is the cyber-fraud empire. It could mean that the company provides cover for the scams through its legitimate investments and subsidiaries. That doesn't mean the company isn't a participant in the alleged crimes, just pointing out that the hook doesn't precisely match the source. (2) By attributing the charges to the company and not Chen, we don't automatically implicate a WP:BLPCRIME issue, and AFAIK there is no similar policy about criminal allegations related to companies. But given that Chen was indicted alongside the company, we're verging into BLPCRIME territory with a hook that uses the description of the prosecution in an ongoing case to describe the subject. (3) The "history" section includes a lot of padding on Chen's bio that's unrelated to the Prince Group. If that were to be removed per WP:DUE, we're very close to the DYK character minimum. I also think there's a presentability issue with the quasi-bullet point format of the history section, and I'd like to see that recast in encyclopedic prose. Dclemens1971 (talk) 13:22, 30 October 2025 (UTC)
- @Dclemens1971: Thanks for the review. Point by point:
- (1) I see what you're saying. How about this: ...The Prince Group owns an airline, controls Cuban cigar distribution, and according to the US Department of Justice, operates "a sprawling cyber-fraud empire"?
- (2) I'm not seeing that this is a problem. The Prince Group as a company is explicitly indicted, and the hook does not mention Chen at all.
- (3) Since this is a current news topic, the article is being heavily edited (by other users, not just me). Chen Zhi (businessman) was recently spun off into its own article, and I plan on moving all the biographical bits about Chen into that article.
- Also, could you expand on the "Long enough" flag? Per DYKCheck, the article is at 2888 chars, comfortably above 1500 (even after the Chen content above is hived off). Asamboi (talk) 19:50, 30 October 2025 (UTC)
- @Asamboi: (1-2) My concern is that we should not be putting unproven criminal charges on the homepage, even for a company and not a person. How is this for a more factual approach that doesn't involve repeating the prosecutorial perspective: ALT2: ... that the Prince Group owns an airline, controls Cuban cigar distribution—and was sanctioned by British and U.S. authorities as an alleged transnational criminal organization? (Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/10/26/cyber-scamming-prince-group-syndicate-singapore/, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c70jz8e00g1o). This leaves out the question of guilt or innocence and focuses on facts (sanctions were imposed). (3) My character count once the extraneous info is removed is 1619, which could fall under 1500 easily with a copy edit by another editor. I would focus on fleshing the article out a bit and providing more buffer, as well as prosifying the list-like nature of the "History" section. (I should add that the word count alone won't hold up approval of the nomination, but if another editor trims the page further, a prep builder or queuer might need to bump it back to the unapproved list.) Dclemens1971 (talk) 20:29, 30 October 2025 (UTC)
- @Dclemens1971: I have removed the extraneous content about Chen and the article is still sitting at 2534 chars. I'm happy to sub in your hook.
@Asamboi: I didn't receive the ping because the post wasn't signed. Since I proposed an alternative, it needs another reviewer. Requesting that now. Dclemens1971 (talk) 14:20, 12 November 2025 (UTC)
- @Dclemens1971: I have removed the extraneous content about Chen and the article is still sitting at 2534 chars. I'm happy to sub in your hook.
- @Asamboi: (1-2) My concern is that we should not be putting unproven criminal charges on the homepage, even for a company and not a person. How is this for a more factual approach that doesn't involve repeating the prosecutorial perspective: ALT2: ... that the Prince Group owns an airline, controls Cuban cigar distribution—and was sanctioned by British and U.S. authorities as an alleged transnational criminal organization? (Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/10/26/cyber-scamming-prince-group-syndicate-singapore/, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c70jz8e00g1o). This leaves out the question of guilt or innocence and focuses on facts (sanctions were imposed). (3) My character count once the extraneous info is removed is 1619, which could fall under 1500 easily with a copy edit by another editor. I would focus on fleshing the article out a bit and providing more buffer, as well as prosifying the list-like nature of the "History" section. (I should add that the word count alone won't hold up approval of the nomination, but if another editor trims the page further, a prep builder or queuer might need to bump it back to the unapproved list.) Dclemens1971 (talk) 20:29, 30 October 2025 (UTC)
@Asamboi: The only interesting thing in ALT2 was "Cuban cigar distribution"; I've just removed the only thing with anything to do with cigars from the article as "a consortium led by Chen" has nothing to do with Prince Group. Also, it's a crying shame this wasn't nominated as a double with Chen, as that would have given a lot more flexibility (hooks beginning "that the owner of Prince Group"/"that a firm owned by Chen Zhi", for example), and I'd be seriously tempted to allow it to be added to this IAR. What do you think @Dclemens1971:?--Launchballer 16:14, 1 December 2025 (UTC)
- The Chen Zhi article did not exist at the time of this DYK nomination, and was seeded with content from this article. I think it would be entirely within the spirit of the rules of DYK to double up or even switch this nomination to it. Asamboi (talk) 21:01, 1 December 2025 (UTC)
- I just discovered that Dclemens1971 recently went on wikibreak, and WP:DYKSPLIT says "Articles split from new articles or articles with active nominations remain eligible". I'm going to say that yes this can be added as a double nom; what I need from you is a second QPQ and a double hook.--Launchballer 13:01, 2 December 2025 (UTC)