Singaporean authorities have frozen over $150 million worth of assets tied to Chen Zhi, the Chinese-born chairman of Cambodia’s Prince Holding Group. The move follows mounting international pressure and coordinated investigations into what prosecutors describe as a massive cross-border crypto fraud network.
The Investigation Unfolds
According to U.S. officials, Chen’s conglomerate allegedly orchestrated extensive “pig butchering” scams, luring unsuspecting workers to Cambodia under false pretenses before forcing them to defraud victims online. These operations, investigators say, ran under a sophisticated shell company structure designed to mask financial flows.
Singapore’s enforcement operation took place on October 30, with police seizing properties, vehicles, luxury items, and financial accounts belonging to Chen and his associates, who are currently outside Singapore. The following day, the authorities officially confirmed the raid.
International Action Builds Momentum
The crackdown coincides with criminal indictments filed by the United States and United Kingdom in mid-October, along with a global seizure effort targeting $14.4 billion in Bitcoin believed to be connected to the scheme.
Founded in 2015, Prince Holding Group once positioned itself as a diversified investment conglomerate spanning real estate, banking, and hospitality. But U.S. prosecutors claim it was in fact a front for large-scale criminal activity. Workers were reportedly trapped in controlled compounds and compelled to run online investment scams targeting victims worldwide.
How the Money Moved
Court filings reveal that Chen’s network routed stolen funds through more than 100 shell companies, crypto exchanges, and mining ventures. Much of this money was converted into Bitcoin to obscure its origin and complicate tracing efforts. Between May 2021 and August 2022, at least $18 million flowed from over 250 American victims into shell entities based in Brooklyn and Queens.
Although this represents only a small slice of the entire operation, investigators believe it forms part of a much larger financial web. In October, the U.S. Treasury’s OFAC blacklisted 146 individuals and entities connected to Prince Group, while FinCEN identified Cambodia’s Huione Group as having laundered over $4 billion. The U.K. has also imposed matching sanctions.
Blockchain Clues That Raised Red Flags
Blockchain analysts noticed unusual Bitcoin movements soon after the U.S. indictment was made public. A wallet associated with LuBian, a Chinese mining pool linked to Chen, suddenly transferred 11,886 BTC worth around $1.3 billion its first activity in three years.
Days later, another 15,959 BTC (about $1.83 billion) shifted across multiple addresses, triggering speculation that Chen’s network was repositioning funds ahead of asset seizures. LuBian, which once dominated the mining space, vanished in early 2021 after a massive breach drained around 127,426 BTC roughly $14.5 billion today. Those coins had remained untouched until reappearing mid-2024.
The Next Chapter
Investigators now allege that Chen used mining operations in Laos, including LuBian and Warp Data, to produce new Bitcoin and disguise illicit proceeds as legitimate mining rewards. By doing so, the group attempted to separate “clean” Bitcoin from tainted assets, further complicating forensic tracking.
If the U.S. Department of Justice succeeds in its forfeiture case, the recovered Bitcoin would rank among the largest crypto seizures in American history.
This latest action underscores both the escalating sophistication of crypto-related crime and the expanding cooperation between governments to combat it. Yet, as enforcement intensifies, questions remain about how to protect the open, permissionless nature of crypto while closing loopholes exploited by bad actors.
The Chen Zhi case may mark a turning point in how regulators and blockchain investigators coordinate across borders revealing not just the scale of modern crypto fraud, but also the global reach of those determined to stop it.
