US authorities have brought down a legal hammer on global company Prince Group as the operator of global forced labor scam operations (including infamous pig slaughter schemes) based in Cambodia, charging the company’s leader and imposing sanctions.
British and Cambodian national Chen Zhi, founder and chairman of Prince Group, was indicted in New York on Tuesday for allegedly conspiring to launder money and commit wire fraud, according to the Department of Justice. In that case, the Justice Department made what it said was its largest cryptocurrency seizure of 127,271 bitcoins. with an approximate value of 14.4 billion dollars in current value.
“Today’s action represents one of the largest attacks ever against the global scourge of human trafficking and cyber financial fraud,” US Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement.
And in a coordinated effort, the U.S. Treasury Department said it sanctioned Prince Group on Tuesday, designating it a transnational criminal organization and blocking its financial activity and the ability of people to do business with it without repercussions in the United States.
According to a statement from the Department of Justice, the defendant and his executives “secretly built the Prince Group into one of the largest transnational criminal organizations in Asia.” One of the main money generators, according to US authorities, was the so-called “pig butchery”, in which people (mainly in the United States) are scammed into crypto assets that they often believe are intended for far-flung romantic partners. “Prince Group carried out these schemes by trafficking hundreds of workers and forcing them to work at complexes in Cambodia and run scams, often under threat of violence,” the statement said, describing complexes with barbed wire, political influence and sophisticated crypto laundering efforts.
The CEO, who is at large, and those accused as accomplices are said to have used the profits on lavish lifestyles, including in one case the purchase of a Picasso painting.
On the same day, the Treasury finalized a rule to completely separate the Cambodian conglomerate Huione Group from the US financial system – the most powerful action in the US international financial arsenal. He said Phnom Penh-based Huione had been laundering the proceeds of crypto scams.
“The rapid rise of transnational fraud has cost American citizens billions of dollars, and their life savings have been wiped out in a matter of minutes,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement.
The Treasury Department has been steadily circling Cambodian criminal enterprises, targeting people allegedly connected to the wide range of illicit activities there. Such cryptocurrency-funded operations have long been the focus of digital asset analysis firms, researchers and even congressional investigations.
Although the system has not yet been established in the United States, the Treasury Department has been trying to implement President Donald Trump’s order to establish a bitcoin reserve. That “strategic” reserve is intended to be the destination of any bitcoin seized by the US government, suggesting a possible final stop for the billions in assets seized in this case.
Read more: The US government begins to separate Cambodia’s Huione group from the financial system
