DOJ seizes $15B in Bitcoin from 'pig butchering' scam based in Cambodia

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/14/bitcoin-doj-chen-zhi-pig-butchering-scam.html

by pseudolus • 9 months ago

410 361 9 months ago

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/chairman-prince-group-indicte...

So apparently the FBI or other US agency hacked this guy and drained his wallets? No indication he’s been arrested, wallets said to be unhosted.

Clearly should’ve used an offline wallet lol.

yellow_lead2• 9 months ago

It may not be a hack, but a warrant like 'Hey Google, give us access to this guy's Gmail.'

ozgrakkurt• 9 months ago

You can’t get a warrant for a bitcoin wallet right?

0xOsprey• 9 months ago

Taylor is on to something here: https://x.com/tayvano_/status/1978273602719158448

tl;dr: Someone cracked these weak entropy wallets 3+ years before anyone else and kept it secret

Whether that was the USG or another entity has yet to be revealed

adamors• 9 months ago

Please use xcancel: https://xcancel.com/tayvano_/status/1978273602719158448 when linking to X since a lot of us don't have accounts or just don't want to log in.

hshdhdhehd4• 9 months ago

Risky move, since it is easy to move the funds to a new address at any time.

stef25• 9 months ago

After having read the thread it's not clear to me where the "3 years" comes from ?

EDIT and were the keys cracked, or were the passphrases obtained ? It's mentioned elsewhere that he had them written down. Which would be a much easier "hack"

jacknews6• 9 months ago

And this isn't the only one.

The ruling family in Cambodia is a big part of it, via their ownership in HuiOne (now renamed), which is essentially the clearing house for the 'industry'.

In fact the Thai-Cambodia border conflict is due to this industry, and a breakdown in the relationship between Thai and Cambodian leaders over it, with the wiley cambodian leader yet again provoking the sensitive border issue for political gain.

decimalenough2• 9 months ago

No, it was a "Russia invading Ukraine" sized miscalculation. The "wily" Cambodian leader's military got their asses handed to them by the Thai army, and Cambodia is suffering a lot more from the still ongoing border closure than Thailand is. Remittances, tourism, trade, you name it, it's all in the doldrums. (Good time to visit Angkor Wat if you can swing it, though.)

wraptile4• 9 months ago

I'm living in Thailand and been following scam centers for years now. It's 100% the scam center fallout mixed with regional politics.

Cambodia is fully commited to scam centers and Thailand doesn't like that and even reached out to Xi directly for cooperation here. Not even a year later the conflict broke.

Finally, cambodia is not suffering at all and if anything the current dictator has become significantly stronger and the country has been on a huge nationalist rise as the dictators control the scam centers and easily repurpose them for online propaganda.

jacknews6• 9 months ago

Militarily you are right, but remember war is politics by other means.

Thailand's Thaksin is now in jail and his daughter, basically his avatar, has been removed from government. Mission accomplished.

And to get a sense of how powerful this scam industry is in the country, the latest news is of a young Korean murdered after being kidnapped by a scam gang. Korea has responded forcefully, calling out the danger, yet the Cambodian press is now full of accusations that Korea is defaming Cambodia, that they are just as guilty of human-trafficking Cambodian brides, that some Koreans who were 'rescued' from a scam center don't actually want to go home, that the international press are unfairly treating Cambodia ... you know the story by now.

_cs2017_2• 9 months ago

Is it actually usable, sellable Bitcoin worth $15B? Or is it some kind of storage that the owner couldn't really use easily for some reason?

$15B of real wealth is a large amount even for a powerful family, so I am surprised it's not a headline news in global media.

advisedwang5• 9 months ago

The forfeiture complaint [1] says:

Chen personally maintained records of the wallet addresses and seed phrases associated with the private keys for each.

So it sounds like they have the seed phrases and thus the private keys.

[1] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nyed.53...

blueprint2• 9 months ago

is Chen in custody?

If not, why wouldn't he just transfer the funds to a new seed?

hansonkd• 9 months ago

So in these cases of government seizing bitcoin, the people they seize from have unencrypted private keys?

The article just says "private keys the defendant had in his possession" does this mean he was holding onto private keys that had no passwords / encryption at all that unlocked $15B?

Or does the government have an alternative way of "seizing" bitcoin? I remember years ago people throwing around conspiracy theories that bitcoin was invented by the NSA / other 3 letter agencies with a backdoor to basically allow easy tracking / seizure of criminal assets.

Im not a conspiracy theorist, but stories like these were the government seems so easy to seize such incredibly large amounts of money so easily seems to suggest some other mechanisms that aren't public.

advisedwang5• 9 months ago

The forfeiture complaint [1] says:

Chen personally maintained records of the wallet addresses and seed phrases associated with the private keys for each.

So he wrote the passwords down, basically.

[1] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nyed.53...

Imustaskforhelp• 9 months ago

Where did he write the passwords that the us govt. seized them exactly?

breadwinner• 9 months ago

They should not have revealed these details... now criminals know how to avoid the same fate.

advisedwang5• 9 months ago

Criminal podcast shared the story of one of the forced workers at scamming camp in Myanmar: https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-332-the-compound-9-12-202...

e40• 9 months ago

Scam, Inc from The Economist is worth the subscription for 1 month. Very in depth.

https://www.economist.com/audio/podcasts/scam-inc

rasz• 9 months ago

Wonder if Musk will be protesting, those seizures could put a dent in SpaceX earnings https://www.barrons.com/news/myanmar-scam-cities-booming-des...

strogonoff• 9 months ago

It’s only technically incorrect to suggest that Musk should protest over the recent $15B scam profit seizure—it was from Cambodian scams, whereas the compounds that reportedly had to switch to Starlink due to being disconnected from the Internet are in Myanmar[0]—but yes, it’s still unclear why would Musk not shut any of it down if they have the capability (and if they don’t, then it’s another interesting controversy).

[0] https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/starlink--an-internet-l...

firen777• 9 months ago

if they have the capability

They absolutely do: https://www.reuters.com/investigations/musk-ordered-shutdown...

tim333• 9 months ago

Glad they got somewhere with that. It's a bit shocking some of the stuff that goes on out there.

kenjackson• 9 months ago

From this article they got $15B (https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/14/bitcoin-doj-chen-zhi-pig-but...). At what point do you say, "That's enough money?" Did they think the scam was going to go on forever?

mothballed3• 9 months ago

I'm not sure if one can merely walk away from a criminal enterprise of that size. As soon as you stop paying certain people you end up in a cage, and unless the stream of money is constant there is no reason to just not reneg on all prior agreements and go in a cage for stuff you already paid authorities off for.

JumpCrisscross4• 9 months ago

As soon as you stop paying certain people you end up in a cage

You end up dead because your co-conspirators don't want to end up in a cage.

dgfitz• 9 months ago

So the whole crypto anonymity thing isn’t actually real? As it turns out, tracing people is still easier than tracing money? Decentralized economies are run by criminal enterprises?! We aren’t safe!?!

Wonder how this whole concept overlays onto LLMs, with a lot more money on the line and a lot less regulation.

verteu• 9 months ago

At that scale, you have massive influence within the Cambodian government, so you're not worried about "getting caught" in the traditional sense.

jeltz3• 9 months ago

You still have to worry about falling out with the government or then caving to foreign pressure and selling you off to appease a foreign power.

apnsngr• 9 months ago

These scams have enormous scale. The Economist has a fascinating podcast about it. The full series requires a subscription, but it is worth at least listening to the first 3 free episodes. https://www.economist.com/audio/podcasts/scam-inc

al_borland• 9 months ago

Had they thought $1B was enough they would have missed out on $14B.

skylurk• 9 months ago

I think the implication is they could have stayed under the radar and still have that $1B.

yieldcrv3• 9 months ago

They have shareholders who bought the shares for more than the company annual revenue and expect infinite potential of profits to justify the price they paid

ur-whale3• 9 months ago

Did they think the scam was going to go on forever?

You underestimate the intensity of human greed.

Wingman4l7• 9 months ago

Long overdue. At some point, these scam operations are so large that they have to be operating with tacit approval of their host countries, who have been given no incentive to stop the virtual cold war against the personal finances of foreign citizenry that is bringing in millions of dollars into their economy.

JumpCrisscross4• 9 months ago

the virtual cold war against the personal finances of foreign citizenry

Comparing a scam to war is inaccurate. The Cold War was a war running cold with the potential to go hot. Cambodia and America are not going to war over this.

greenchair• 9 months ago

that's a pretty naive view of war. we are at war with many countries all the time, most of it is cold.

bobthepanda• 9 months ago

Interestingly enough, China is thought to have leaned on the scales in Myanmar’s civil conflict due to pig-butchering there. (Not only were they scamming Chinese, they were also human trafficking them to operate the scams.)

xnx3• 9 months ago

The US is blowing up alleged drug boats and their crews so anything is possible.

JKCalhoun4• 9 months ago

The Cold War was a war running cold with the potential to go hot

I'm not sure I buy that definition. I think most understand a Cold War to be simply a "war" done without weapons but by other means — via economic means, propaganda, etc.

PaywallBuster3• 9 months ago

Direct link to the indictment https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/chairman-prince-group-i...

Cambodia's specifically 30-50% of the economy can be directly attributed to scamming plus casinos

This one of the other organizations / major bank used for money laundering directly linked to Hun Sen

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huione_Group

The company is linked to Cambodia's ruling Hun family, which includes the current prime minister, Hun Manet.[4] His cousin Hun To is a major shareholder and director of Huione Pay

yhager• 9 months ago

Cambodia's specifically 30-50% of the economy can be directly attributed to scamming plus casinos

Are you saying that 30-50% of Cambodia's economy can be directly attributed to scamming and casinos? I find that shocking and hard to believe. Do you have a source for that statement?

senordevnyc3• 9 months ago

Cambodia's specifically 30-50% of the economy can be directly attributed to scamming plus casinos

This is ridiculously false.

rags2riches• 9 months ago

This makes me think of the Barbary Wars where piracy out of the Barbary states was a huge issue. There's also the connection with the slave trade then and the human trafficking for the scam centers now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_Wars

jowea4• 9 months ago

Also North Korea with its state sponsored internet privateering.

khuey• 9 months ago

Makes me imagine a buddy cop comedy but it's the US and China teaming up to deal with the scammers in Burma.

Animats• 9 months ago

DOJ press release.[1] DOJ claims custody of US$15 billion in Bitcoin. "Largest forfeiture action in the history of the Department of Justice."

[1] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/chairman-prince-group-indicte...

tnt128• 9 months ago

Would these money be returned to the victims?

mothballed3• 9 months ago

Why would the government bother prosecuting/seizing it if the money was going to the victims?

wkat42422• 9 months ago

Um maybe because the government isn't supposed to work for profit but to enforce the law and do the right thing for victims and society?

If they're going to be only prosecuting crimes where there's something in it for them it's going to be a very unsafe society.

Waterluvian• 9 months ago

That’s how it’s supposed to work. But these days who knows.

boc• 9 months ago

“Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®"

https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-d-libertari...

littlecranky672• 9 months ago

Unfortunately, in pig butchering scams the victims often feel ashamed and wouldn't claim their stake.

mrandish4• 9 months ago

Sounds like good news but the press release doesn't detail how the FBI managed to trace, positively identify and then seize such a huge pile of crypto ($15B) from a suspect they say took extensive steps to launder and hide the source and ownership of the crypto. I'm curious because this guy is clearly very experienced, highly sophisticated and located in a country where the government and law enforcement are obviously tacitly protecting him.

So did the U.S. hack this guy? Anyone who manages to build such a massive multi-national corporation with myriad illicit businesses but also dozens of legitimate businesses with thousands of employees - including a large bank with over 100,000 customers - and then operate it all for over a decade, doesn't strike me as someone who's trivially careless. I mean he managed to successfully protect that much money for a long time from his own criminal co-conspirators (who would certainly include hackers with insider knowledge of his operations), criminal competitors and all the people he was bribing like senior Cambodian politicians, law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

This just strikes me as either a very lucky break or a perhaps a sign that the FBI is adopting a new playbook to go after shielded international operations like this. Like maybe involving U.S. and 'Five Eyes' intelligence assets.

lotsofpulp3• 9 months ago

I am also curious how the US government obtained possession of the bitcoin if the defendant is still at large. Doesn’t that defeat the whole point of bitcoin?

sidewndr462• 9 months ago

According to Ars Technica: "Adding further mystery, it’s unknown how federal officials managed to obtain the cryptographic keys required to seize the funds from Zhi."

My assumption is that at this point they just have orders from a judge allowing them to do it and they will find the means later.

tonyhart72• 9 months ago

"but the press release doesn't detail how the FBI managed to trace, positively identify and then seize such a huge pile of crypto ($15B) from a suspect they say took extensive steps"

Am I slow??? or what under circumstance that you expect FBI to told press how their operate????

ChrisArchitect• 9 months ago

U.S. Sanctions Cambodian Conglomerate, Citing Role in 'Pig-Butchering' Scams

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45584418

dang3• 9 months ago

Thanks, we'll merge that thread hither

chistev• 9 months ago

Do they force you to reveal your private keys?

After obtaining the bitcoins, are they forced to sell it immediately? How does this affect the market?

me_again• 9 months ago

As I understand it, they persuade their marks to transfer bitcoin to accounts they control.

oskarkk• 9 months ago

Bitcoin market cap is $2.2T, so $15B of that is 0.7% of all bitcoins. They aren't selling them on open market, but in an auction (or a couple of auctions). It may not have an immediate influence on the bitcoin price, unless the buyer sells them right away. When someone sells an amount that big, it's done over a long period of time, to not crash the market (you'd probably get significantly less money if you sold it fast).

Once they did, however, the marshals fell back on standard procedure, preparing to handle the Bitcoin the same way they would a coke smuggler’s speedboat: by auctioning it off. That posed challenges because of the sheer size of the seizure—about 175,000 Bitcoins, or 2% of all the Bitcoin in circulation at the time. According to a prosecutor familiar with the case, the marshals opted for a staggered series of auctions to avoid crashing Bitcoin’s price. In four auctions between June 2014 and November 2015, the marshals sold the Silk Road Bitcoins for an average price of $379. (https://fortune.com/crypto/2018/02/21/government-forfeiture-...)

There were also some bitcoins seized from a hacker that stole them from Silk Road in 2013, and when they seized it in 2020 it was worth $1B, now it's worth $6.5B. Nice profit for the government. https://fortune.com/crypto/2025/01/09/federal-government-all...

Eisenstein• 9 months ago

Bitcoin market cap is $2.2T, so $15B of that is 0.7% of all bitcoins.

Famously illiquid though.

hshdhdhehd4• 9 months ago

Through my mind... either they do deals less for prison time. $15bn for some freedom. Or they do something "extrajudicial" with a $5 wrench.

lesuorac2• 9 months ago

After obtaining the bitcoins, are they forced to sell it immediately? How does this affect the market?

Other way around, by executive order they're forced to hold it in a sovereign wealth fund.

mrandish4• 9 months ago

Typically, they need to get a conviction in court to actually do anything with the seized funds. At the moment, they don't even have the guy in custody.

andruby• 9 months ago

I had never heard of "pig butchering".

The practice is called “pig butchering” because scammers deliberately build up trust and emotionally manipulate victims over an extended period—much like fattening up a pig—before ultimately stealing as much money as possible in a final act of financial “slaughter”

decimalenough2• 9 months ago

It's a direct translation of the Chinese 杀猪.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_butchering_scam

vintermann3• 9 months ago

And it's a bad expression, because it's the scammers own smug term of contempt, and makes victims less likely to come forward/warn each other thanks to the shame.

YuukiRey• 9 months ago

I can highly recommend a recent series of podcasts by The Economist on precisely this topic https://www.economist.com/podcasts/2025/02/06/1-pigs-in-a-ba...

PoignardAzur• 9 months ago

It's a huge deal in China, though Europeans are starting to get targeted as well.

Reason0772• 9 months ago

Wow. $15 billion is an astronomical, nearly unfathomable amount of money in Cambodia. This must have been a huge operation. It's almost 1/3 of the country's entire GDP!

Well done DOJ. Hopefully the victims get their money back.

tonyhart72• 9 months ago

their business is scam center that by definition is not counted by GDP anyway

alecsm2• 9 months ago

Which makes it worse. A scamming operation that is 1/3 of the GDP is huuuuuuge.

IanCal2• 9 months ago

That’s not necessarily true, though may be for Cambodia. GDP can include black market activities but countries differ in whether they include specific ones and how.

bilekas2• 9 months ago

That money would have flowed somewhere, also I'm not sure OP was talking about impacting the GDP just quantizing it. For Cambodia, it's an extraordinary amount of money. Actually for anywhere it's a ridiculous amount of money.

jowea4• 9 months ago

There are countries that count illegal activities in their GDP estimates.

And should their state sponsored criminal activities count for North Korean GDP for example?

ValveFan6969• 9 months ago

The victims getting their money back would defeat the whole purpose of Bitcoin. No one knows who originally owned it.

How about cash it out and trickle it down to us... or is all that just gonna magically disappear?

IshKebab• 9 months ago

Well you could just reverse all the transactions. But they probably won't do that.

eloisius• 9 months ago

Surely it would be possible for victims to come forward and provide a paper trail of WhatsApp transcripts and blockchain transactions.

ForHackernews• 9 months ago

It's part of America's new Strategic Crypto Reserve where Uncle Sam holds bags for crypto bros.

classified• 9 months ago

It is definitely going to magically disappear, as in used as funding for ICE.

vkou• 9 months ago

Wait, hold on, I thought the promise of crypto was that:

1. The feds can't take your money.

2. Once your money's gone, it's gone.

If criminals can't count on #1 holding true, and their victims can't count on #2 holding true, what is even the point of it?

Muromec4• 9 months ago

They used the forbidden technique of 5€ wrench.

yard20102• 9 months ago

Instead of these two take this simple rule: not your key not your money.

There's no thing that the feds can't have because they have an infinite amount of sanctions violence and tools at their disposal to make anyone do what they want, one way or another.

Jolter2• 9 months ago

Criminals can’t count on #1 if they hold the keys on them when they get arrested.

were previously stored in unhosted cryptocurrency wallets whose private keys the defendant had in his possession. Those funds (the Defendant Cryptocurrency) are presently in the custody of the U.S. government.

jimbohn• 9 months ago

The new promise of crypto is helping organized crime or sanctioned individuals/countries with payments, and it's delivering!

yieldcrv3• 9 months ago

Its not clear how the feds got the money

More information as the mystery deepens, it's not proceeds from just the pig butchering

https://www.elliptic.co/blog/15-billion-us-seizure-reveals-p...

xnx3• 9 months ago

1/3 of the country's entire GDP

$15 billion is a huge number to be sure, but it's unclear from the article how many years it took to acquire.

postexitus• 9 months ago

So should we praise the gang's money saving habits?

abenga• 9 months ago

Pitfalls of comparing flows with stocks.

sorz• 9 months ago

Better be "three months of the country's GDP".

Cthulhu_2• 9 months ago

Compared to Cambodia, sure, but it's an international crime gang, with this particular one being just one branch. I wonder if this was their biggest hoard or if they had more?

Really poor financial management to have all that money concentrated that much though. It either means they dropped the ball bigly, or this is spare change for them... although Bitcoin's market cap is $2.24 trillion at the moment, $15 billion is a significant chunk of that.

itopaloglu832• 9 months ago

In $5 wrench we trust. - Bitcoin

idiotsecant• 9 months ago

The difference between 15 billion and 2.24 trillion is pretty much 2.24 trillion. I'm not sure there is a definition of the word where this is true .

Sohcahtoa82• 9 months ago

although Bitcoin's market cap is $2.24 trillion at the moment, $15 billion is a significant chunk of that.

Literally about 0.67%.

I wouldn't call that significant.

bapak• 9 months ago

Does not apply.

Cambodia is just a proxy, a land where the Chinese gangs act with impunity. Earned with slave work, money is laundered in casinos and no Cambodian is seeing a cent of it.

Might as well say "nearly unfathomable amount of money in Congo" because that's just how disconnected the money is to the country.

jacknews6• 9 months ago

No, some Cambodians are seeing a very sizeable benefit, probably the standard 20% that the leading family cream off of any major investment in the country.

And BTW it is not just the Chinese, there are innumerable other operators, including a whole bunch of smaller 'startups'.

They operate because Cambodia openly accepts it, and takes a cut, not because they are somehow so clever as to disguise the real business being conducted in closed-up apartment blocks.

weird-eye-issue2• 9 months ago

They operate in places like Cambodia but it's the Chinese

There's areas in Laos and Cambodia they control where it literally operates under a different set of laws. One of the areas, I think in Laos, Americans aren't even allowed to enter

forgotoldacc• 9 months ago

The facilities aren't even remotely hidden so it's fair to blame Cambodia for allowing it. They have towns built up around them with restaurants and shops and normal economic functions to support the people running these slave towers. A good chunk of the money is flowing back into China, but there's definitely a good bit that seeps out into the Cambodian economy. Hence why Cambodia's government is more than happy to let it operate.

In the case of Myanmar, I think their biggest problem is the country has been in a war for decades with loads of various factions and it's too chaotic for any government to attempt to get anything under control.

pantalaimon2• 9 months ago

Khesrau Behroz did an amazing podcast about those operations (in German though) [0]. Basically when there was a crack down on providers of illegal sports betting in China, they went abroad and diversified. The betting operation is used to launder the money from those scam operations and betting is still immensely popular in China and done via VPN. Those East Asian sport betting providers are sponsors of many Champions League clubs so their (often changing) names get know the gamblers in China watching the games.

So yea, there are massive amounts of money involved.

[0] https://www.rbb-online.de/legion/

cjonas• 9 months ago

There's an interesting "Search Engine" podcast (in English)[0]. Apparently a lot of the people doing the actual scamming are human trafficked and being held in compounds against their will.

[0]https://www.searchengine.show/whos-behind-these-scammy-text-...

sangel212• 9 months ago

Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia thailand also catched a few. I would not be surprised if they take advantage of westerners as well. 15Billion++ is a big incentive.

I heard an agent got court for opening bank accounts for them in Pattaya, over 500 accounts. We have had crackdowns on banking here in Thailand ever since.

butterfi• 9 months ago

I'm very curious what happens to that money. I very much doubt any of the actual victims will see it.

yieldcrv3• 9 months ago

To the Bitcoin Strategic Reserve it goes!

graybeardhacker• 9 months ago

Not sure if you're joking about the victims getting their money back. In case you're not, they won't.

The DOJ adds seized crypto to the American crypto reserve. https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/03/fact-sheet-pr...

From the webpage: " The Executive Order begins to resolve the current disjointed handling of cryptocurrencies seized through forfeiture by, and scattered across, various Federal agencies. Currently, no clear policy exists for managing these assets, leading to a lack of accountability and inadequate exploration of options to centralize, secure, or maximize their value. Taking affirmative steps to centralize ownership, control, and management of these assets within the Federal government will ensure proper oversight, accurate tracking, and a cohesive approach to managing the government’s cryptocurrency holdings. This move harnesses the power of digital assets for national prosperity, rather than letting them languish in limbo. "

grafmax• 9 months ago

It’s almost like one criminal organization stealing from another.

MagicMoonlight• 9 months ago

Well how would you know who to return it to? It's crypto, the genius system which will totally replace money, which doesn't allow you to track simple things like transaction history and remedy fraud like this.

It's not like a cambodian pig butchering operation is going to keep detailed ledgers of who they scammed and for how much.

wraptile4• 9 months ago

Btw this is low-key the reason why Cambodia almost went to war with Thailand recently. In particular what's interesting is that how quickly Cambodia repurposed scam center employees as internet trolls. They're onto a really powerful golden goose here that not only brings in 15B usd but also empowers the current dictatorship. But also it's a pit of doom that is destined to erupt anytime now.

jjangkke2• 9 months ago

At this point its accurate to say the Cambodian leadership have completely been subjugated through corruption and that they are no longer running the country but Chinese OCGs who are affiliated with CCP and that they are probably influencing it at a state level on all matters.

We are seeing similar attempts in other Southeast Asian countries and even Korea but Cambodia seems like an outlier. It's sad that not enough of these subversive influence campaigns by China is being talked about here.

Once again, it is America leading the way and using its vast intelligence and military power to be a de-facto global police. Obviously DOJ acted because of Americans were victimized but in doing so have done what South Korean government failed to do.

Lot of heat and criticisms against South Korean government now and its embassy in Cambodia that have largely acted in negligence, even telling one of the victims to report it to Cambodian police and don't bother them.

Daishiman• 9 months ago

At this point its accurate to say the Cambodian leadership have completely been subjugated through corruption and that they are no longer running the country but Chinese OCGs who are affiliated with CCP and that they are probably influencing it at a state level on all matters.

What are some news related to this?

ergocoder• 9 months ago

People love to hate US being the world police. For a small developing country, US is a godsend.

littlecranky672• 9 months ago

Since in pig butchering scams the victims often do not go to the police or tell anyone due to feelings of shame, we can assume quite a big pot of that money will go into the US federal crypto reserve.

throw-10-13• 9 months ago

I am shocked that the organizer of a large scam call center in SEAsia is a Chinese national.

Large scam call centers run by Chinese nationals are getting broken up in the region pretty regularly.

myrmidon• 9 months ago

I see multiple factors here:

- There's a lot of Chinese people in the region (1.3b vs <20M in Cambodia)

- Better access to capital for setting up big operations like this

- Much tighter control and policing in their homeland, so the scammers operate elsewhere

lifestyleguru2• 9 months ago

Who they were scamming, Americans? How they managed to gain trust, even considering strong accent or grammatical mistakes. How do they identify and trace these Chinese fraudsters? They all look the same and have a name like Hi Lo. Where the money go... of course real estate.

horseradish7k• 9 months ago

this should answer some of your questions: https://youtu.be/vu-Y1h9rTUs

lifestyleguru2• 9 months ago

Sad to see so many Ukrainians sucked into these schemes as employees.

mrtksn• 9 months ago

It's 127,271 Bitcoins. Interesting choice not to mention the number of Bitcoins but use its current market value in USD. I feel like this says something about Bitcoin but not sure what exactly.

Edit: Wow, people really don't want to know how many Bitcoins were seized :)

jlg23• 9 months ago

This is regular reporting using end-consumer market rates to inflate numbers.

Just as you could not sell 127,271 bitcoins all at once at market value, you could not just sell cocaine worth $1.4 billion but still confiscated drugs, even in large quantities, are reported with end consumer market rates. Nowadays, if a report mentions that is talking about "street value", that is already a big plus in my book.

deviation• 9 months ago

Anecdotally, I would have thrown "127,271 BTC to USD" into Google. I didn't mind it.

Cthulhu_2• 9 months ago

This is why crypto could never be considered a currency, even the earliest news about BTC (value, theft, pizza purchases, etc) was always reported in USD values.

But then again, so do big Eve Online battles.

homakov• 9 months ago

No such thing as "crypto". You're intermixing form (BTC Jurisdiction state machine) with particular instance (BTC token, USDC token, whatever fungible or not)

nashashmi• 9 months ago

It says Bitcoin is not a standard denomination. Sort of like if you are in France, and Disney bought Discovery, you would want to know the buying price in euros, not US dollars.

onlyrealcuzzo• 9 months ago

What it means, is that the average person doesn't care about Bitcoin, so if you want the article to apply it the average person, you need to denominate the value in something else.

If someone stole 22 WobiBobbyBones I wouldn't care. If a WobiBobbyBone was worth a billion dollars, then I'd think that's news.

jeltz3• 9 months ago

So if somebody sized a stock portfolio should they mention the number of shares? The market value is in most cases more interesting than the number of coins.

lesuorac2• 9 months ago

If it's a single stock portfolio yeah. If it's like 1000 different stocks then stick that information into an appendix and only use the current market value in the write-up.

It's like confiscating a Ferrari and saying you took $5 million of car parts from a drug dealer. Like instead say you confiscate 2 Ferraris with a total market value of $5 Million.

bdcravens3• 9 months ago

While the USD value is important, this puts the number in perspective, since only 21M BTC can ever exist (and a good number of them are out of circulation for various reasons).

ratelimitsteve6• 9 months ago

so many hard drives in so many landfills where we thought "hell, it's only $20 in btc, hardly worth reclaiming"

I'm proud to say that I was able to acquire about $100 worth of product from the dark web using only what would turn out to be several hundred thousand dollars in bitcoin, so at least mine are still in circulation

zahlman3• 9 months ago

It could be more or less meaningful depending on how long the operation has been running, I suppose. That would impact on the integral of the value that was expropriated, as of the time of expropriation.

ratelimitsteve6• 9 months ago

It's CNBC. They have to write this for people who know what a bitcoin is worth, people who know a bitcoin is a thing but have no idea what they're worth, and people who've only ever heard the phrase "bitcoin" as a series of noises. But everyone reading cnbc knows what a dollar is.

Stevvo• 9 months ago

It is relevant, because the US Strategic Bitcoin Reserve hold it in BTC, not in USD.

jandrese2• 9 months ago

If they mention it by number of BTC then the USD value would be different for every person who read the article, in a few days it might be dramatically different. Who knows?

kristianp• 9 months ago

Agreed. Just like the record price of gold never mentions inflation-adjusted figures, news reporters/editors make the minimum effort, maximum "hype" choices.

Ross Ulbricht had more, at over 144,000⁽¹⁾, with additional 51,000 seized from a hacker⁽²⁾.

[1] https://fortune.com/crypto/2025/01/22/ross-ulbricht-pardon-b...

[2] https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/us-attorney-announces-h....

yard20102• 9 months ago

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.

Gentle reminder that the presence of a strong democratic regime with law and no bribes keeps the world a better place.

Once the US becomes corrupted at this scale we are doomed to this bullshit.

pjc502• 9 months ago

Already past that, I'm afraid. With the Presidential cryptocurrency and the lack of investigation into Supreme Court finances, it's going to be grift all the way down.

I'm not sure how you can pull out of it without jailing a significant fraction of the Republican party (and quite a few elderly Democrats). Plenty of people around Trump got jailed and that didn't make a difference.

lurk22• 9 months ago

The DOJ article is far more informative than the CNBC article. Chen Zhi, the alleged perpetrator, remains at large.

yapyap• 9 months ago

wonder what they’ll spend it on

JonChesterfield• 9 months ago

The point of bitcoin was that it can't be taken off you by the state. So either this was severe user error, to the tune of why aren't the keys somewhere secure when there's a billion dollars behind them, or the nominal reason for bitcoin existing is nonsense.

We thinking user error or crypto is nonsense? On the forum I expect the former.

mlnj• 9 months ago

Reminds me of this XKCD: https://xkcd.com/538/

With bitcoin you can't even just rely on memory for the keys, you need something physical that can be taken away from you.

bdcravens3• 9 months ago

Not really. Hardware makes it easier to manage, but anyone with the private key can access the coins at a given address.

Of course, private keys are practically unmemorizable, but you can restore a Bitcoin wallet with your seed phrase.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Seed_phrase

jbstack3• 9 months ago

Unless you are suggesting that the encryption algorithms underlying Bitcoin have been broken (which would be absolutely huge news with all sorts of far reaching consequences), then it's clearly the former.

georgemcbay3• 9 months ago

Crypto is nonsense for a lot of its stated purposes once you strip away the shared delusions that have been propped up by us living in a fairly stable global society that at least goes through the motions of supporting the rule of law (though this is obviously changing quickly in some places recently).

But then again holding some piece of paper (or a database entry) that says you own some gold that you don't actually have in your possession is equally nonsense that also works until it doesn't.

jbstack3• 9 months ago

If you don't pay your debts or taxes then even items that you own and which are in your possession can be taken from you, thanks to the rule of law. Conversely, if someone comes along and takes it from you without legal justification, the rule of law allows you to claim it back. That same rule of law ensures that you are entitled to the gold you own that isn't in your possession.

Drawing the line at possession is arbitrary. Either way your ownership is governed by law, and is only as good as the strength of that law.

zahlman3• 9 months ago

The point of bitcoin was that it can't be taken off you by the state.

The point of a "pig butchering scam" is that victims are socially engineered into giving their assets (in this case, bitcoin) to someone else.

ratelimitsteve6• 9 months ago

you're right but that's not what we're talking about. we're talking about someone among the social engineers that made a mistake which allowed the DoJ to seize the btc.

BitWiseVibe• 9 months ago

I'm curious how the Bitcoin was actually seized, given that the indictment says the perp is still at large and held the Bitcoin in self custodied wallets.

reverendjames2• 9 months ago

He has the key written on a piece of paper in his wallet. The US government has his wallet. And his Bitcoin.

pants2• 9 months ago

So he was effectively carrying $15B in his wallet? That's insane. I don't even carry more than $100 cash.

laser2• 9 months ago

With the recent insane moves in quantum stocks almost makes me wonder if there’s a possibility the NSA or other USG agency is far enough ahead of publicly known capabilities in quantum computing to brute force private keys/break encryption and this info is leaking into markets.

Of course the more likely explanation is that this was a sophisticated albeit classical hack (infrastructure, social engineering, surveillance, whatever) and the quantum run-up is unrelated retail investor hysteria, but have to consider the possibility the market knows something I don’t. If the government stays far ahead enough of private industry at some point in the coming years (or decades) the USG will break encryption without public disclosure unless quantum resistant algs are put in place before that capability is achieved. Hopefully this more exotic implausibility isn’t the explanation, but entertaining to consider, and history is bizarre enough for it to be true.

dan-robertson• 9 months ago

I would go with the likely explanation here.

laser2• 9 months ago

I certainly do. If I really thought such a fringe explanation was anything more than highly improbable I don’t think I would feel comfortable even mentioning it at all. Still I find it a worthwhile exercise to consider outlier scenarios. The real story of course is probably even more bizarre and fascinating but I’m not sure we’ll get the declassified details this century of how the USG pulled off the biggest heist from heisters ever.

kevinak4• 9 months ago

It boggles my mind that people like this don't set up multi-sig wallets using hardware devices that are physically not in the same location.

ur-whale3• 9 months ago

See my other comment in the thread.

In my experience, folks who dabble in crypto and even seasoned users always underestimate how hard and tricky of a problem proper self-custody actually is.

And when they do think about it, it's always too late.

And by the way, multi-sig is not the only thing you want to be thinking about.

Cold walletting is another that most people miss.

Also, avoiding concentrating a large number of coins on a small number of addresses (not that I know this was done in the cast of this scam) is another thing most people miss when in fact this was from day one listed as bad practice by IIRC Satoshi himself.

And finally, to mention the standard counter-argument to self-custody: the $5 pipe wrench attack only works if the attackers know the coins exist.

For those interested in plumbing the depth of the problem, the glacier protocol is a good place to start:

https://glacierprotocol.org/

exe34• 9 months ago

how does one seize bitcoins? presumably he left them on an exchange? not your keys, not your crypto.

mshanu• 9 months ago

Just curious, how will you sieze bitcoin?

jeffrallen• 9 months ago

Get the private key and send a transaction transferring the sum to a new wallet for which you are sure only your agency knows the private key.

powerapple2• 9 months ago

I wish there is a way for the scam victims to claim some money back. That would be awesome.

kylehotchkiss2• 9 months ago

Yes it would!

Meanwhile, our current leadership will probably just wire it over to Argentina

nomilk• 9 months ago

Seems organised crime is taking advantage of less-policed (or lawless) regions in Cambodia and Burma.

The spectre of a similar scam has resulted in lower Chinese tourism to Thailand. Basically Chinese (among other nationalities) tourists were led from the airport by fake immigration staff, put into cars and driven to Burma and forced to work 18 hour days in scam call centers.

A chilling but extremely worthwhile read.

https://www.reuters.com/graphics/SOUTHEASTASIA-SCAMS/mypmxwd...

timtom1232• 9 months ago

Spent significant time in Vietnam & Cambodia & Thailand. Cambodia is a sad country full of desperate people. "less-policed" is the entire country. ~50 years since https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide.

Vietnam was by far my favorite of the three and the contrast between the three countries is stark.

OutOfHere• 9 months ago

How does Laos compare?

parthdesai• 9 months ago

Spent significant time in Vietnam & Cambodia & Thailand. Cambodia is a sad country full of desperate people.

Probably should also include which country is responsible for the current condition of the country.

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1175241-once-you-ve-been-to...

bugbuddy3• 9 months ago

[flagged]

dunkvg4• 9 months ago

Yes they are not on the same level, Thailand used to be far ahead but has stagnated and Vietnam has caught up, Cambodia is so far behind you cannot imagine it will ever catch up with its neighboring countries. They still use dollars as currency because the local currency is so unstable

EvanAnderson• 9 months ago

I got a lot less snarky in my responses to scam text messages when I learned about the forced labor aspect. I just block the sender and go on, versus trying to bait them and waste their time.

sangel212• 9 months ago

Were? they still are. It's not even a small amount there are thousands of people at these centers.

jjangkke2• 9 months ago

also this isn't a "lawless" region that OP is talking about they are in city centers in Cambodia and the Cambodian police and government officials are all getting paid off to let them operate freely.

it really is disgusting to see this level of corruption and that its going to have long term economic impact on Cambodia and Cambodians abroad.

charlieyu1• 9 months ago

And for some reasons there are Americans thinking they were wrong going to Vietnam

refurb2• 9 months ago

Indeed. I spent a while in Vietnam and it was a regular occurrence of news stories about locals being rescued from all sorts of situation, not just scam centers - casinos, massage parlors.

The stories ranged from video of people running away from these places to escape, to Vietnamese police bribing people back to Vietnam who had been lured with the promise of a good job.

Cambodia really is the Wild West of this stuff.

malux85• 9 months ago

This is horrendous

3abiton• 9 months ago

15B lost, but it gave us good memes. Still, unbelievable amount.

dunkvg4• 9 months ago

As a Thai person I want to clarify its not Thai people doing this, it's Chinese people who have setup scam call centers near the golden triangle (where law enforcement is non-existent, it is a drug trafficking area) who are running the show, and they exclusively target only Chinese people.

thenthenthen• 9 months ago

Recent bust of a crime family complete with army in Myanmar, possibly related?

https://m.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_31797410 (sorry Chinese)

JKCalhoun4• 9 months ago

I would love to see a new take on "James Bond" (or similar franchise? new franchise?) — one that is realistic and instead sees our spy move through these modern domains of illegal money instead of battling the clichéd Cold War villains with their Persian cats.

pantalaimon2• 9 months ago

China did it

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_More_Bets

JKCalhoun4• 9 months ago

Thanks.

auntienomen• 9 months ago

That's more of a crime film than a spy film. Worth watching though!

olalonde• 9 months ago

I don't understand how he was savvy and organized enough to operate such a massive operation and yet didn't manage to secure his $15 billion crypto wallet... Amazing.

PaulHoule• 9 months ago

Looks like the US is getting a "national Bitcoin reserve" without even trying.

ratelimitsteve6• 9 months ago

legendary shiny DoJ w

TypicalHog• 9 months ago

$15B is a mind-blowing amount. I came here just to make sure it wasn't an M to B typo.

swframe2• 9 months ago

If DOJ knows the destination wallets can they trace the transactions ...

into the wallets back to the victims?

from the wallets forward to the others working with the scammer?

kylehotchkiss2• 9 months ago

Wow, maybe we should use this to pay our ATC

itsthejb• 9 months ago

This sounds very much like the operation described in the book Number Go Up, which is ostensibly about FTX, but is really about a number of crypto operations which may or may not be illegal

which• 9 months ago

It took 10 years for Madoff victims to get most of their money back and he was literally just depositing the money into his checking account. He also almost certainly had much fewer victims than this guy did. Based on the complaint I think there may be a large number of international victims as well. This case will really test whatever claims process the DOJ has but hopefully some measure of compensation can be reached quickly. I suspect there are tens of thousands of scam domains and different addresses used so even identifying who to notify will probably be extremely difficult.

jwpapi3• 9 months ago

How can you scam 15B and not be smart enough to make your btc unaccessible ?

acdha2• 9 months ago

It’s not about “smart” as much as perfect execution. Bitcoin’s design is very brittle, so he had to do everything perfectly every time but they only needed a single opening. People try various things to split up wallets but those are complicated for a criminal who doesn’t have many people they trust and targeted attacks by nation-state level adversaries are extremely hard to stop (e.g. for an operation of this level, burning a few million on a zero day isn’t a very big chunk of the budget).

jwpapi3• 9 months ago

You can just send it to a cold wallet, bury it and say oops lost ?

Palmik• 9 months ago

So, who gets the money? Surely this criminal enterprise had victims from multiple nations, not just the US.

ropable• 9 months ago

The human cost of these industrialised pig butchering scam compounds in southeast Asia is staggering. Hundreds of thousands of people forced to work in indentured- or slave-labour conditions, running these scams on people in other countries. There's an enormous toll at both ends of the practice. Life in jail is far too good for the criminals running these places.

unixhero• 9 months ago

15b is an insurmountable in poor Cambodia

cityzen• 9 months ago

Does this go towards the White House ballroom with a few coins tossed to the ring kissers? For real, what happens to this $15 billion?

chrisldgk• 9 months ago

For the German HN readers, there’s a really good podcast with some investigative journalism about this exact topic made by the public broadcast services: https://www.ardaudiothek.de/episode/urn:ard:episode:305aa362...

I don’t believe there’s an English translation sadly, but I’d be happy to be proven wrong.

DOJ seizes $15B in Bitcoin from 'pig butchering' scam based in Cambodia

Related Stories