Feds Seize Record-Breaking $15 Billion in Bitcoin From Alleged Scam Empire

Over the past five years, criminals behind widespread romance and investment scams—often inelegantly referred to as “pig butchering”—have stolen tens of billions from people around the world. Now law enforcement has carried out one of its biggest operations yet against that sprawling scam industry, targeting the operators of several modern slavery scam compounds in Southeast Asia—where, as a whole, hundreds of thousands of human trafficking victims have been forced to run the fraud operations on behalf of criminal gangs.

On Tuesday, officials in the United States and United Kingdom took coordinated action against one giant Cambodian organization and its boss who has allegedly run a series of notorious scam centers in the country. The US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced it has issued financial sanctions against 146 “targets” linked to the newly designated Prince Group Transnational Criminal Organization. This action includes targeting individuals and shell companies linked to the alleged criminal enterprise. As part of the sweeping action also involving the FBI, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) has also seized almost 130,000 bitcoin worth around $15 billion at the time of the announcement—the largest US cryptocurrency seizure to date.

This Prince Group organized crime entity, OFAC says, is made up of the Prince Holding Group, a Cambodia-based company, its chairman and CEO Chen Zhi, and his associates and business partners. Publicly, the company describes itself as “one of the largest conglomerates in Cambodia” and says it is involved in real estate development and financial services. However, the DOJ alleges that “in secret” Chen and other executives “grew Prince Group into one of Asia’s largest transnational criminal organizations” and ran at least 10 scam compounds across Cambodia.

“As alleged, the defendant directed one of the largest investment fraud operations in history, fueling an illicit industry that is reaching epidemic proportions,” said Joseph Nocella Jr., a US attorney for the Eastern District of New York, in a statement. “Prince Group’s investment scams have caused billions of dollars in losses and untold misery to victims around the world.” Chen has not been arrested and remains at large, the DOJ says.

“The masterminds behind these horrific scam centers are ruining the lives of vulnerable people and buying up London homes to store their money,” Britain’s foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, said in a statement. The UK also placed financial sanctions on Chen, the Prince Group, and other linked entities. The UK’s sanctions also “freeze” businesses and properties allegedly linked to Chen in London, including a £12 million ($16 million) mansion in North London and a £100 million ($133 million) office building in the City of London.

A WIRED email to an address listed as a media contact on the Prince Holding Group website immediately bounced back.