The Justice Department has seized approximately $15 billion bitcoin held in cryptocurrency wallets owned by a man who oversaw a massive pig slaughter fraud operation in Cambodia, prosecutors said Tuesday.
The seizure is the DOJ's largest forfeiture in history.
An indictment against alleged pork butcher, Chen Zhi, was unsealed Tuesday in federal court in Brooklyn, New York.
Zhi, also known as “Vincent,” remains at large, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York.
He was identified in the lawsuits as the founder and chairman of Prince Holding Group, a multinational business conglomerate based in Cambodia, which prosecutors said “secretly … grew into one of Asia's largest transnational criminal organizations.”
U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella said Zhi “directed one of the largest investment fraud operations in history, fueling an illegal industry that has reached epidemic proportions.”
“The Prince Group investment scam has caused billions of dollars in losses and untold misery for victims around the world, including here in New York, on the backs of individuals who have been trafficked and forced to work against their will,” Nocella said.
The Prince Group, which operates companies in more than 30 countries, operated “forced labor scam complexes throughout Cambodia,” the U.S. Attorney's Office said in a news release.
“Individuals held against their will at the complexes engaged in cryptocurrency investment fraud known as pig butchering scams, stealing billions of dollars from victims in the United States and around the world,” the press release said.
The scam involved people contacted online via social media and messaging applications transferring cryptocurrency into accounts controlled by the system, with false promises that the crypto would be invested and produce a profit, the office said.
“In reality, the money was stolen from the victims and laundered for the benefit of the perpetrators,” the statement said. “The perpetrators of the scams often built relationships with their victims over time, gaining their trust before stealing their money.”
Prosecutors said hundreds of people were trafficked and forced to work in the scam complexes, “often under the threat of violence.”
Zhi and a network of top Prince Group executives are accused of using political influence in multiple countries to protect their criminal enterprise and paying bribes to government officials to prevent law enforcement actions against the scheme, prosecutors said.
This is the latest news. Refresh the page for updates.
