$15 billion worth of bitcoin seized! US and UK join forces to crack down on Southeast Asia pig-butchering scam empire

The US and UK have joined forces to take action against "one of the largest investment scam networks in history," seizing a record-breaking amount of funds.

Written by: Wired

Translated by: Luffy, Foresight News

Over the past five years, criminals behind global pig-butchering scams have stolen tens of billions of dollars from around the world. Now, law enforcement agencies have launched one of the largest operations to date against this vast scam industry, targeting operators of multiple modern slavery scam compounds in Southeast Asia. In this region, hundreds of thousands of human trafficking victims are forced to carry out scams for criminal groups.

On Tuesday, US and UK officials coordinated a crackdown on a major criminal organization and its leader in Cambodia, who is said to run several notorious scam centers in the country. The US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced financial sanctions against 146 targets associated with the newly designated Prince Group transnational criminal organization, covering individuals and shell companies linked to the criminal empire. As part of a broader operation involving the FBI, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) also seized nearly 130,000 bitcoin, which were worth about $15 billion at the time of the announcement—marking the largest cryptocurrency seizure in US history.

OFAC noted that the Prince Group criminal entity consists of Cambodia-based Prince Holding Group, its chairman and CEO Chen Zhi, and their associates and business partners. The company claims to be one of Cambodia’s largest conglomerates, with businesses 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 orchestrated one of the largest investment scam networks in history, fueling an illegal industry that has become rampant,” said US Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr. for the Eastern District of New York in a statement. “Prince Group’s investment scams have caused billions of dollars in losses to victims worldwide and immeasurable suffering.” The DOJ revealed that Chen Zhi has not yet been apprehended and remains at large.

UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper stated: “The masterminds behind these horrific scam compounds destroy the lives of vulnerable people while hiding their illicit gains by purchasing property in London.” The UK has also imposed financial sanctions on Chen Zhi, Prince Group, and other related entities, freezing London commercial assets and properties allegedly linked to Chen Zhi, including a mansion in North London valued at £12 million (about $16 million) and an office building in the City of London worth £100 million (about $133 million).

Reporters sent an email to the media contact listed on the “Prince Holding Group” official website, but it was immediately returned.

“Today’s coordinated action is the most significant blow yet to Southeast Asian cybercrime groups,” said John Wojcik, a senior threat researcher at cybersecurity firm Infoblox specializing in Asian affairs. He previously tracked scam compounds and Southeast Asian cybercrime at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Wojcik believes the group “is far from an ordinary criminal gang—it is one of the region’s largest cybercrime and money laundering entities, and a leader in criminal fintech and infrastructure.”

However, there is still an unresolved twist in the case. Cryptocurrency tracing company Elliptic pointed out in a blog post on Tuesday that the bitcoin seized by US law enforcement appears to be the same funds stolen in 2020 from a Chinese crypto mining company called Lubian. The current indictment describes Lubian as part of Chen Zhi’s money laundering network, possibly as part of a scheme to transfer scam proceeds into crypto mining hardware to generate “clean new coins” with no criminal record.

It remains far from clear who actually stole these funds in 2020, or whether a theft even occurred. “It’s possible Chen Zhi faked the theft as part of a money laundering scheme to obscure the flow of funds,” said Elliptic co-founder Tom Robinson. “A second possibility is that the theft was real, and the perpetrator may have been the US government, but more likely it was someone else.” Robinson said US law enforcement may have subsequently tracked down the thief and somehow seized the funds from them.

Regardless of the crypto mining money laundering and mysterious theft, the indictment accuses Chen Zhi of being a core participant in the Chinese-language pig-butchering scam ecosystem. Over the past decade, organized crime groups active in Southeast Asia have operated dozens of scam compounds in Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia. These compounds, mostly controlled by Chinese criminal groups, lure people from more than 60 countries worldwide with fake job ads. Upon arrival, victims often have their passports confiscated and are forced to run various online scams targeting people globally; those who refuse may be beaten or abused. In addition to human trafficking and fraud, these scam compounds are often linked to money laundering and online gambling.

The DOJ indictment against Chen Zhi and seven unnamed co-conspirators alleges that Prince Group operates over 100 companies in 30 countries and lists several suspected subsidiaries. The indictment also mentions that some local organizations, including a network in Brooklyn, New York, have served Prince Group. The charges state that since 2015, Chen Zhi and company executives have established and operated scam compounds across Cambodia, using political influence in multiple countries to protect their criminal empire, even establishing connections with Chinese police and the Ministry of State Security.

The indictment states: “Chen Zhi was directly involved in managing the scam compounds and kept records for each site, including documents tracking scam profits that explicitly mention the term ‘pig-butchering’,” and also allegedly maintained “ledgers of bribes to public officials.” One document reportedly held by Chen Zhi showed that two scam centers were equipped with 1,250 phones used to control 76,000 social media accounts. The indictment also accuses Chen Zhi of possessing images proving Prince Group’s use of violence against trafficked victims in the scam compounds, including pictures showing people bleeding and being beaten.

The 127,271 bitcoin seized in this case were worth over $15 billion at the time of confiscation. This is the largest asset seizure in the history of the US Department of Justice, setting a record for both cryptocurrency and any other form of funds. The previous US law enforcement record was set in 2022, when 95,000 bitcoin (worth $3.6 billion) were seized; the Manhattan couple involved later admitted to stealing funds from the Bitfinex exchange. Earlier, in 2020, law enforcement seized $1 billion in bitcoin allegedly stolen by an anonymous hacker from the Silk Road dark web drug market. In addition, in June this year, UK police seized 61,000 bitcoin (worth $6.7 billion) from a Chinese woman suspected of investment fraud, a sum surpassing the previous US record but still less than half the amount seized in the Prince Group case.

“It’s important to note that the extraordinary significance of this seizure lies not just in its scale, but in its symbolism,” said Ari Redbord, global policy head at crypto tracing firm TRM Labs, adding that “this is still only a small fraction of the illicit profits from scam compounds.” He added: “These are not isolated scams, but factory-scale operations relying on forced labor, amplified by the speed and scale of cryptocurrency, and interconnected through complex money laundering infrastructure spanning 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 found that these sites are rapidly expanding and using illicit gains to invest in increasingly sophisticated scam activities. Over the past two years, scam compounds have also begun to appear outside Southeast Asia, with related sites found in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and West Africa.

“By targeting the financial structures—shell companies, banks, exchanges, and real estate—that move and hide illicit funds, the US and UK are dismantling the economic engine that sustains these crimes,” Redbord said. “This is what 21st-century counter-threat finance should look like—coordinated, data-driven, and global.”