U.S. authorities dropped a legal hammer on global firm Prince Group as an operator of forced-labor global scam operations \u2014 including infamous pig butchering schemes \u2014 based in Cambodia, indicting the company’s leader and imposing sanctions.<\/p>\n
UK and Cambodian national Chen Zhi, the founder and chairman of Prince Group, was indicted in New York<\/a> on Tuesday for allegedly conspiring to launder money and committee wire fraud, according to the Department of Justice. In that case, the DOJ took what it said was its largest-ever crypto seizure of 127,271 bitcoin BTC$112,218.68<\/a>, worth about $14.4 billion at current value.<\/p>\n “Today\u2019s action represents one of the most significant strikes ever against the global scourge of human trafficking and cyber-enabled financial fraud,\u201d said U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi, in a statement.<\/p>\n And in a coordinated effort, the U.S. Department of the Treasury said it sanctioned Prince Group <\/a>on Tuesday, designating it a transnational criminal organization and blocking its financial activity and the ability for people to do business with it without U.S. repercussions.<\/p>\n According to a DOJ statement, the defendant and his executives secretly “grew Prince Group into one of Asia\u2019s largest transnational criminal organizations.” One of the leading money generators, according to the U.S. authorities, was so-called “pig butchering” in which people \u2014 largely in the U.S. \u2014 are scammed for crypto assets they often believe are going toward remote romantic partners. “Prince Group carried out these schemes by trafficking hundreds of workers and forcing them to work in compounds in Cambodia and execute the scams, often under the threat of violence,” the statement said, describing barbed-wired compounds, political influence and sophisticated crypto laundering efforts.<\/p>\n The CEO, who is at large, and those accused as co-conspirators are said to have used proceeds on lavish lifestyles, including in one case the purchase of a Picasso painting.<\/p>\n On the same day, the Treasury finalized a rule to entirely sever Cambodian conglomerate Huione Group<\/a> from the U.S. financial system \u2014 the most potent action in the U.S. international financial arsenal. It said Phnom Penh-based Huione had been laundering proceeds of crypto scams.<\/p>\n “The rapid rise of transnational fraud has cost American citizens billions of dollars, with life savings wiped out in minutes,\u201d said Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, in a statement.<\/p>\n The Treasury Department has steadily been circling Cambodian criminal enterprises, targeting individuals<\/a> allegedly connected with the vast array of illicit activities there. Those crypto-funded operations have long been a focus of digital assets analytics firms<\/a>, investigators and even congressional inquiry.<\/p>\n Though the system hasn’t yet been established<\/a> in the U.S., the Treasury Department has been trying to implement President Donald Trump’s order to set up a bitcoin reserve. That “strategic” reserve is meant as the destination of any bitcoin seized by the U.S. government, suggesting a potential final stop for the billions in assets taken in this case. <\/p>\n The specific assets seized in the Price Group case originated as assets said to be stolen from LuBian<\/a>, a bitcoin mining operation working out of China and Iran and controlled by Prince’s Chen, according to an analysis from Elliptic<\/a>. Once said to be the sixth-largest crypto mining operation in the world, LuBian shut down shortly after the assets were said to go missing in 2020.<\/p>\n “It remains unclear how the bitcoins came to be in US custody,” Elliptic said in its report on Tuesday. “It\u2019s also unclear who ‘stole’ the bitcoins from Chen\/LuBian or whether a theft really took place.”<\/p>\n