Seizing 127,000 Bitcoins! The United States strikes against the Southeast Asian "Pig-butchering scams empire" Prince Group, simultaneously sanctioning the Huiwang Group.

The United States and the United Kingdom have teamed up to launch the largest crackdown on the transnational criminal organization of the Prince Group in Cambodia, prosecuting its chairman Chen Zhi for online fraud and human trafficking, and initiating the largest confiscation by the Ministry of Justice against $15 billion of bitcoin, exposing the shady “pig killing plate” fraud that has swept the world. (Synopsis: The U.S. is buying Bitcoin!) Congress asked Michael Saylor and Tom Lee to figure out how to buy 1 million BTC in five years) (Background added: ProCap BTC founder Anthony Pompliano: The United States will announce in the future that it has spent money to buy bitcoin) The U.S. Treasury Department issued an announcement on October 14, announcing that its Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) are working with the United Kingdom diplomatically. The Office of Federal and Development Affairs (FCDO) has worked closely to take tough action against Southeast Asian cyberfraud and money laundering criminal groups that endanger citizens of the United States and other U.S. allies. The operation directly targeted the Prince Group TCO in Cambodia, and the United States exposed its industrial-scale online fraud, human trafficking and money laundering activities, which is the largest joint crackdown between the United States and Britain on transnational crime in recent years. Prince Group and Huiwang Group Heavily Sanctioned The U.S. Treasury Department announced that OFAC imposed comprehensive sanctions on 146 targets within the Prince Group's transnational criminal organization led by Chen Zhi, a Cambodian national. The press release pointed out that the group focuses on fake cryptocurrency investment schemes (commonly known as “pig killing plates”), plundering billions of dollars of victims in the United States and around the world through online fraud, and is involved in transnational criminal activities such as human trafficking, sex extortion and money laundering. At the same time, FinCEN also completely segregated the Cambodian financial services group Huione Group from the U.S. financial system under Section 311 of the USA Patriot Act. The announcement emphasizes that Huiwang Group has laundered money for malicious cybercriminals for many years, and the stolen funds involved in virtual currency fraud and robbery have become a key node in the flow of criminal funds. The U.S. Treasury added that losses from online investment fraud have continued to climb in recent years, totaling more than $16.6 billion. According to U.S. government estimates, U.S. citizens lost at least $10 billion to scams in Southeast Asia in 2024, a 66% surge from the previous year, with Prince Group fraud in particular. At the same time, according to FinCEN's investigation, Huiwang Group laundered at least US$4 billion between August 2021 and January 2025, some of which came from virtual currencies looted by North Korean hackers, some from “pig-killing plate” scams, and other illegal funds from other online scams. Therefore, in order to cut off criminal funding channels, FinCEN prohibits U.S. financial institutions from opening or maintaining correspondent accounts for Huiwang Group and requires measures to prevent them from indirectly entering the U.S. financial system. At the same time, the British FCDO also imposed sanctions on Prince, Chen Zhi and their main associates, and coordinated with the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York to unblock the criminal indictment against Chen Zhi. Chen Zhi indicted, $15 billion bitcoin confiscation set a record for the Department of Justice At the same time, the Eastern District Attorney's Office of New York also issued an announcement announcing that the federal court in Brooklyn, New York, had unsealed an indictment accusing Prince Group founder and chairman Chen Zhi (aka “Vincent”) of conspiracy with telecommunications fraud and money laundering conspiracy, leading a Cambodian fraud park, forcing detainees to carry out “pig-killing” cryptocurrency fraud, stealing billions of dollars from victims in the United States and around the world. More strikingly, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York and the Department of Justice's Division of National Security plan to file civil forfeiture lawsuits against about 127,271 bitcoins (currently valued at about $15 billion) that are the proceeds and tools of Chen's fraud and money laundering scheme, stored in his personal cryptocurrency wallet. The funds are now in the custody of the U.S. government, making it the largest confiscation in the history of the Justice Department. In this regard, according to the analysis of X user @tier10k, this batch of bitcoins is suspected to be related to the theft of the LuBian mining pool in 2020. At the time, about 127,426 bitcoins were transferred from the Lubian mining pool address, but the hackers have not moved the funds since. The 127,271 BTC ($14B) they are seeking to forfeit are actually from the LuBian mining operation that was ran by the defendant and were actually stolen back in 2020. Have been sat idle ever since. Probably quite unlikely they get them, unless some sort of fake hack. pic.twitter.com/XZ3ZMwq7zi — db (@tier10k) October 14, 2025 US Bitcoin reserves raised to 320,000? We know that after Trump took office this year, the United States announced the establishment of a strategic reserve of bitcoins, and about 200,000 bitcoins have entered the reserve. However, it is worth noting that the United States is currently adopting a budget-neutral strategy, that is, not spending additional money to buy bitcoin, but mainly putting bitcoin from judicial confiscation into the reserve. Now, with the seizure of Chen Zhi-related bitcoins in the United States, the number of bitcoin reserves in the United States is expected to increase to more than 320,000. Therefore, some analysts pointed out that this will constitute a major positive for bitcoins, after all, the United States will not sell these bitcoins in the short term. Prince's criminal empire and fraud pattern Since 2015, Chen has led the Prince Group, a multinational conglomerate ostensibly focused on real estate, finance and consumer services, but has secretly grown into one of Asia's largest transnational criminal organizations, according to indictments and forfeiture lawsuits. Under the direction of Chen Zhi, Prince Group operated a fraud park in Cambodia and made huge profits through fake cryptocurrency investment schemes. Scammers use messages or social media to contact victims, falsely claiming that the funds will be invested, tricking money transfers and stealing funds. Prince's fraud relies on human trafficking to force hundreds of workers to commit fraud in parks with high walls and barbed wire, which resemble violent labor camps. Chen Zhi directly manages the park, recording profits and details of scams, including automated scams using “mobile farms” with thousands of mobile phones. He even held photographs showing beatings and torture, and instructed his subordinates to commit violence against “troublemakers” but demanded not to be “killed.” In order to cover up the proceeds of crime, Chen Zhi used sophisticated cryptocurrency money laundering techniques to disperse funds into dozens of addresses and re-integrate, and exchanged some of the proceeds into bitcoin and stored them in exchange wallets. These illicit proceeds are used to buy luxury goods such as yachts, private jets, Picasso paintings, etc. Related reports “1011 Insider Whale” opens another $500 million Bitcoin short order, 24 hours…