$15 billion in Bitcoin seized as US and UK team up to crack down on Southeast Asian "pig butchering" scam empire

Text: Wired

Translation: Luffy, Foresight News

Over the past five years, criminals behind pig-butchering scams operating worldwide have stolen tens of billions of dollars from victims across the globe. Now, law enforcement agencies have launched one of the largest actions to date against this vast fraud industry, targeting operators of multiple modern slavery scam compounds in Southeast Asia, where hundreds of thousands of human trafficking victims are forced by criminal syndicates to conduct fraudulent operations.

This Tuesday, U.S. and British officials coordinated action against a major crime syndicate in Cambodia and its alleged leader, who reportedly operates several notorious scam centers within the country. The U.S. Department of Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced financial sanctions on 146 targets linked to the newly designated Prince Group transnational criminal organization, including individuals and shell companies tied to this criminal empire. As part of a comprehensive operation involving the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) also seized nearly 130,000 bitcoins, which were valued at approximately $15 billion at the time of announcement — the largest cryptocurrency seizure ever conducted by the United States.

OFAC stated that the Prince Group criminal entity consists of the Cambodian-based Prince Holdings Group, its chairman and CEO Chen Zhi, and associated personnel and business partners. The company publicly claims to be one of Cambodia’s largest conglomerates, with operations spanning real estate development and financial services. However, the DOJ alleges that Chen Zhi and other executives secretly transformed Prince Group into one of Asia’s largest transnational criminal organizations, operating at least 10 scam compounds within Cambodia.

"As alleged, the defendants ran one of the largest investment fraud networks in history, fueling an already rampant illicit industry," said Joseph Nocella Jr., Acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, in a statement released today. "The Prince Group's investment scams have cost global victims billions of dollars and caused immeasurable suffering." The DOJ disclosed that Chen Zhi is currently not in custody and remains at large.

UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper stated that "the masterminds behind these horrific scam compounds are destroying vulnerable lives while hiding their illicit proceeds in properties in London." The UK has also imposed financial sanctions on Chen Zhi, Prince Group, and other related entities, freezing London-based commercial assets and real estate allegedly linked to Chen, including a £12 million ($16 million) mansion in North London and a £100 million ($133 million) office building in the City of London.

Emails sent to the media contact address listed on the "Prince Holdings Group" official website were immediately returned.

"Today’s coordinated action represents the most significant blow yet against cybercrime groups in Southeast Asia," said John Wojcik, Senior Threat Researcher at cybersecurity firm Infoblox focusing on Asian affairs, in a statement. He previously tracked scam compounds and Southeast Asian cybercrime at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Wojcik described the group as “far from an ordinary criminal gang — it is one of the largest cybercrime and money laundering entities in the region and a leader in criminal fintech and infrastructure.”

However, there remains an unresolved twist in the case. Cryptocurrency tracking firm Elliptic pointed out in a blog post this Tuesday that the bitcoins seized by U.S. law enforcement appear to match funds stolen in 2020 from Lubian, a Chinese cryptocurrency mining company. The current indictment describes Lubian as part of Chen Zhi’s money laundering network, potentially indicating a criminal scheme to transfer scam proceeds into cryptocurrency mining hardware to generate "clean new coins" with no traceable criminal history.

It remains highly unclear who exactly stole the funds in 2020, or whether a theft occurred at all. "It’s possible Chen Zhi fabricated the theft as part of a money laundering plan to obscure the trail of funds," said Tom Robinson, co-founder of Elliptic. "A second possibility is that the theft did occur, possibly carried out by the U.S. government — but more likely by someone else." Robinson suggested that U.S. law enforcement may have later traced the thief and confiscated the funds from them in some manner.

Setting aside the cryptocurrency mining money laundering and mysterious theft, the indictment accuses Chen Zhi of being a central figure in the Chinese-speaking pig-butchering scam ecosystem. Over the past decade, organized crime groups active in Southeast Asia have operated dozens of scam compounds across Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia. These compounds are largely controlled by Chinese-speaking criminal groups that use fake job advertisements to lure people from over 60 countries worldwide. Once victims arrive, their passports are often confiscated and they are forced to run various online scams targeting global victims; those who resist are sometimes beaten or abused. In addition to human trafficking and fraud, these scam compounds are frequently linked to money laundering and online gambling operations.

The DOJ indictment against Chen Zhi and seven unnamed co-conspirators alleges that Prince Group operates over 100 businesses across 30 countries and lists multiple suspected subsidiary companies. The indictment also mentions local networks, including one based in Brooklyn, New York, that worked for Prince Group. It alleges that since 2015, Chen Zhi and corporate executives have built and operated scam compounds throughout Cambodia, using political influence in multiple countries to protect their criminal empire, including connections with Chinese police and China’s Ministry of State Security.

The indictment states: "Chen Zhi was directly involved in managing the scam compounds and maintained records for each compound, including documents tracking scam profits that explicitly reference the term 'pig butchering,'" along with suspected "ledgers detailing bribes paid to public officials." A document allegedly held by Chen Zhi shows two scam centers equipped with 1,250 phones used to control 76,000 social media accounts. The indictment further alleges that Chen Zhi possessed images proving Prince Group’s use of violence against trafficked individuals brought to the scam compounds, including photos showing bleeding and physical beatings.

The seized 127,271 bitcoins had a market value exceeding $15 billion at the time of confiscation. This marks the largest single asset seizure in the history of the U.S. Department of Justice, setting a record regardless of whether measured in cryptocurrency or any other form of assets. Previously, the U.S. law enforcement record was set in 2022 when 95,000 bitcoins (worth $3.6 billion) were seized from a Manhattan couple who later admitted stealing funds from the Bitfinex exchange; earlier in 2020, authorities seized $1 billion in bitcoins allegedly stolen by an anonymous hacker from the Silk Road darknet drug marketplace. Additionally, UK police seized 61,000 bitcoins (worth $6.7 billion) in June this year from a Chinese woman suspected of investment fraud — surpassing the previous U.S. record but still less than half the amount seized in the current Prince Group case.

"It’s important to note that the significance of this seizure lies not only in its scale but also in its symbolism," said Ari Redbord, Head of Global Policy at cryptocurrency tracking firm TRM Labs, adding that "this still represents only a small fraction of the illegal profits generated by scam compounds." He added: "These are not isolated fraud cases, but factory-scale operations relying on forced labor, amplified by the speed and scale of cryptocurrency, and interconnected through complex money laundering infrastructures spread across Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, China, and beyond."

Redbord believes this large-scale operation strikes at the operational and financial core of the scam compound ecosystem. In recent years, researchers tracking Southeast Asian scam compounds have observed rapid expansion in scale and reinvestment of illicit proceeds into increasingly sophisticated fraud schemes. Over the past two years, such compounds have begun emerging outside Southeast Asia, with sites identified in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and West Africa.

"By targeting the financial architecture — shell companies, banks, exchanges, and real estate — used to move and hide illicit proceeds, the U.S. and UK are dismantling the economic engines that sustain these crimes," Redbord said. "This is what 21st-century anti-threat finance operations should look like — coordinated, data-driven, and global."