A truly despicable criminal empire has come under the crosshairs of the Department of Justice.
And now, the U.S. government is 127,271 Bitcoin richer, worth roughly 14 billion dollars.
For years, a modern-day slavery operation ran in the shadows of Southeast Asia, disguised as a crypto investment opportunity.
At the center stands Chen Zhi, born in China in 1987, the chairman of the Prince Group and, according to U.S. prosecutors, the mastermind behind one of the largest forced-labor scam networks on Earth.
His syndicate perfected the art of “pig butchering,” elaborate online frauds that lure victims through fake relationships and false promises of lucrative crypto gains, only to strip them of everything.
The horror did not end with the victims in the US and UK.
The people running those scams were victims too.
Recruited under the guise of legitimate work, they were trafficked into heavily guarded compounds across Cambodia.
These were walled prisons lined with barbed wire and armed guards.
Inside, hundreds were forced to scam others under threat of violence.
Those who disobeyed were beaten, electrocuted, and tortured in rooms designed specifically for that purpose.
These were modern-day slaves, forced to flirt online to steal from lonely, unsuspecting people across the world.
The man behind it all, 38-year-old Chen Zhi, used his stolen wealth to build a financial empire.
He owned casinos, property developments, and even a commercial bank, using that influence to gain favor with Cambodia’s political elite.
Over 18 months, U.S. and U.K. investigators followed the digital footprint, tracing billions in stolen crypto as it moved through exchanges, mixers, and wallets.
The trail led directly to Chen’s empire and to 127,271 Bitcoin, sitting quietly in cold wallets under his control.
Those wallets now belong to the United States government, in what is officially the largest crypto forfeiture in Department of Justice history.
More Bitcoin seized in one case than any nation, except for the US and China, even holds.
This haul brings the US government’s total Bitcoin holdings to roughly 325,000 BTC, worth more than 37 billion dollars, increasing the country’s stack by 64 percent.
With geopolitical tensions mounting and the world searching for a neutral reserve asset, gold has added over 10 trillion dollars in market cap in just a year as central banks race to diversify.
So here is the question.
By pouring resources into law enforcement efforts that just further extended the United States lead in sovereign Bitcoin reserves, is the United States quietly signaling that its financial future is intertwined with Bitcoin?
