US targets Cambodian Pig Butchering, takes $ 14B to Bitcoin as the largest ever seizure
US authorities have dropped a legal hammer at the Prince Group’s global company as an operator of forced global scam operations-including deadly pork killings schemes-based in Cambodia, indicating the company leader and imposing penalties.
The UK and Cambodian National Chen Zhi, the founder and chairman of the Prince Group, is accused of New York On Tuesday due to alleged conspiracy with launder money and committee wire fraud, according to the Department of Justice. In that case, the DOJ took what it said was the largest-ever crypto seizure of 127,271 bitcoin costs about $ 14.4 billion in the current value.
“The action now represents one of the most significant strikes against the global human trafficking and cyber plague that has enabled financial fraud,” US lawyer Pamela Bondi, said in a statement.
And in a coordinated effort, the US Department of the Treasury it said the prince group was punished On Tuesday, its designing a transnational criminal organization and blocking financial activity and the ability for people to do business here without US repercussions.
According to a statement by the DOJ, the defendant and his executives secretly “the Prince Group has grown in one of Asia’s largest criminal transnational criminal organizations.” One of the leading currency generators, according to US authorities, is called “pig butchering” where people-more in the US-have been scammed for crypto properties they often believe to go to remote romantic partners. “The Prince Group is conducting these schemes by trading hundreds of workers and forcing them to work at compounds in Cambodia and carry out scams, often under the threat of violence,” the statement said, describing barbed-wired compounds, political influence and sophisticated Crypto-launching efforts.
The CEO, which is large, and the accused as co-conspirators are said to use proceeds in the luxurious lifestyle, including a case the purchase of a Picasso painting.
On the same day, Treasury finished a rule to completely break Cambodian Conglomerate Huione Group From the US financial system – the most powerful action in the US International Financial Arsenal. It said Phnom Penh, based on Huione, has been a laundering income of crypto scams.
“The rapid increase in transnational fraud costs American citizens of billions -billions of dollars, with life savings that have been eliminated in minutes,” the secretary of the Treasury Scott Bestent said in a statement.
The Department of Treasury continues to circle Cambodian Criminal Enterprises, target individuals It is allegedly connected to a wide range of forbidden activities there. Crypto -funded operations have long been committed Digital companies of analyticsInvestigators and even asking Congress.
Even the system has not been established In the US, the Treasury Department has tried to enforce President Donald Trump’s order to set up a Bitcoin reserve. The “strategic” reserve is meant to be the destination of any Bitcoin seized by the US government, suggesting a potential final stop for billions -billions of properties taken in this case.
Read more: The US government is starting to break Cambodia’s Huione Group from the financial system
