The Justice Department has seized approximately $15 billion in Bitcoin held in cryptocurrency wallets belonging to a man who oversaw a massive fraudulent “pig butchery” operation based in Cambodia, prosecutors announced Tuesday.
This seizure constitutes the largest forfeiture action conducted by the DOJ in history.
An indictment charging alleged pig 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 court filings as the founder and chairman of Prince Holding Group, a Cambodia-based multinational business conglomerate that prosecutors say became “secretly…one of the largest transnational criminal organizations in Asia.”
U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella said Zhi “led one of the largest investment fraud operations in history, fueling an illicit industry that reached epidemic proportions.”
“The Prince Group investment scams have caused billions of dollars in losses and untold misery to victims around the world, including here in New York, on the backs of individuals who were trafficked and forced to work against their will,” Nocella said.
The Prince Group, which operates businesses in more than 30 countries, ran “fraudulent forced labor complexes throughout Cambodia,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a press release.
The documents detailed the completion of two particular facilities with 1,250 cell phones and controlling 76,000 accounts on a popular social media platform.
Source: Eastern United States District of New York
“Individuals held against their will at the compounds engaged in fraudulent cryptocurrency investment schemes, known as ‘pig butchering’ scams, that stole billions of dollars from victims in the United States and around the world,” the statement said.
According to the bureau, the scams tricked people contacted through social media and online messaging apps into transferring cryptocurrencies to accounts controlled by the system, falsely promising that the cryptocurrencies would be invested and produce profits.
“In reality, the funds were stolen from the victims and laundered for the benefit of the perpetrators,” the statement said. “The perpetrators of the scam often built relationships with their victims over time, gaining their trust before stealing their funds.”
Prosecutors said hundreds of people were trafficked and forced to work at the fraudulent complexes, “often under threat of violence.”
Zhi and a network of senior Prince Group executives are accused of using their political influence in several countries to protect their criminal enterprise and paying bribes to officials to avoid actions by law enforcement authorities targeting the scheme, according to prosecutors.
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