The Department of Justice has seized about $15 billion worth of bitcoin held by a man who oversaw a massive “pig butchering” fraud operation based in Cambodia, prosecutors said Tuesday.
The seizure is the largest forfeiture action by the DOJ in history.
An indictment charging the alleged pig butcher, Chen Zhi, was unsealed Tuesday in federal court in Brooklyn, New York.
Zhi, who is also known as “Vincent,” remains at large, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York.
Zhi was identified in court filings as the founder and chairman of Prince Holding Group, a multinational business conglomerate based in Cambodia, which operates dozens of business entities in more than 30 countries.
The Prince Group’s operation included “forced-labor scam compounds across Cambodia,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a press release.
“Individuals held against their will in the compounds engaged in cryptocurrency investment fraud schemes, known as ‘pig butchering’ scams, that stole billions of dollars from victims in the United States and around the world,” the release said.
Prosecutors said that hundreds of people were trafficked and forced to work in the scam compounds, “often under the threat of violence.”
Zhi and a network of top executives in the Prince Group are accused of using political influence in multiple countries to protect their criminal enterprise and paid bribes to public officials to avoid actions by law enforcement authorities targeting the scheme, according to prosecutors.
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