Author: Baihua Blockchain

On October 22, Cambodia's Anti-Fraud Committee announced the freezing of nearly 1 billion USD in assets belonging to the Prince Group, identified 198 affiliated companies, and issued arrest warrants for 32 people. In the same month, the United Kingdom froze the London mansion of the Prince Group's finance chief. Asset recovery is still accelerating, but that batch of Bitcoin has not moved a single satoshi.

About 127,000 coins, breaking the three-year seizure record held by the Bitfinex case. At the coin price when the U.S. Department of Justice filed charges in October 2025, this was equivalent to about 15 billion USD.After being transferred to a U.S. government cold wallet in June-July 2024, it went completely silent on-chain.

01. Ten Compounds, Tens of Thousands of Slave Workers

Chen Zhi was born in 1987 in Fujian, China, holds the Cambodian title of Neak Oknha (often translated as "Duke"), and once served as a senior adviser to former Prime Minister Hun Sen. His Prince Holding Group claims to control more than 100 entities, with operations in over 30 countries.

The federal indictment in the Eastern District of New York revealed another side:The Prince Group built and operated at least 10 enclosed scam compounds across Cambodia, surrounded by high walls, barbed wire, and armed guards.

This is not a prison; it is the "industrial park" of a business group that claims to be in real estate.

Inside the compounds, industrialized fake investment scams operate, known in the industry as "pig-butchering scams." Just two sites yielded 1,250 mobile phones and over 76,000 fictitious social media accounts under control.

Call operators fabricated identities as high-end financial professionals, spent months building trust with targets, and then led them to fake trading platforms.After victims put in their savings, all contact was cut off.

At the bottom of the scam is human trafficking.A 2023 report by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights estimated that at the peak of Cambodia's scam compounds alone, at least 100,000 forced laborers were detained. The indictment cited communications records alleging that Chen Zhi personally approved violent corporal punishment of workers.

A duke title, a charitable facade, and behind it a slave labor camp enclosed by barbed wire.The Prince Group is not a fraud gang; it is a complete chain from human trafficking to crypto money laundering.

In January 2026, Chen Zhi was arrested in Cambodia. At least seven jurisdictions worldwide subsequently initiated freezing or confiscation of Prince Group assets. The United States sought forfeiture of about 127,000 Bitcoin, Cambodia froze nearly 1 billion USD in assets and identified 198 affiliated companies, Hong Kong restricted about 8.9 billion HKD, and the United Kingdom froze London mansions, jewelry, and wristwatches of associated individuals.

02. Where Did the Private Keys Come From?

The 127,000 Bitcoin are the core subject matter of the entire case, but their origin is itself a mystery.

Blockchain intelligence firm Elliptic published a tracking report in October 2025, concluding that these Bitcoin were not an aggregation of transfers from victims of fraud, but assets moved out in one go from the mining pool LuBian in December 2020.

However, the U.S. Department of Justice still maintains that these Bitcoin are fraud proceeds converted through money laundering and are forfeitable assets.

LuBian once ranked among the world's top mining pools. But its technical team made a fatal error when generating cold wallet private keys:the random algorithm used to generate passwords used only a 32-bit seed, for a total of about 4.3 billion possibilities.That sounds like a lot, but for modern computers, trying them one by one is merely a matter of time.

In December 2020, about 127,000 Bitcoin were drained in one go, worth about 3.5 billion USD at the time.

The mining pool operator spent tens of thousands of dollars in on-chain fees to send hundreds of pleading messages to the target address, saying, "Please return our funds; we are willing to pay a ransom." No one responded. LuBian ceased operations in early 2021, and the incident was once regarded as an internal exit scam.

It was not until August 2025 that on-chain analysis firm Arkham Intelligence disclosed some address profiles, bringing this asset that had lain dormant for five years back into public view.

The U.S. Department of Justice has kept the process of obtaining the private keys highly confidential. The public complaint only states that these Bitcoin are now in the custody of the U.S. government, without explaining exactly how control was obtained.

But one key question remains unanswered:If Chen Zhi's people stole the mining pool's coins, how did the U.S. government get the private keys from him?The indictment does not explain.

The origin of the private keys is unclear, and that is precisely the legal foundation of the entire forfeiture case.The defense team has already pointed out in a court motion that the opaque means of acquisition may undermine the legality of the forfeiture.

03. Seven Countries Pursue Assets, Winner Undetermined

Prince Group assets are scattered across at least seven jurisdictions, and asset recovery proceedings in each are advancing independently.

The federal court for the Eastern District of New York is hearing the civil forfeiture case over the Bitcoin. As of October 2026, both sides are still exchanging legal documents, and a final ruling is far off.

In January 2026, the Central Bank of Cambodia formally ordered Prince Bank to liquidate and arranged for depositors to withdraw funds.

On October 22, the Anti-Fraud Committee further announced the results of its inventory:freezing buildings, casinos, and thousands of properties valued at nearly 1 billion USD, identifying 198 affiliated companies, and issuing arrest warrants for 32 people.

In May 2026, the Hong Kong High Court issued a property restriction order against Chen Zhi and others totaling about 8.9 billion HKD. Of that, more than 6 billion HKD is under Chen Zhi's personal name.

In October, the United Kingdom froze the London mansion, jewelry, and wristwatches of Prince Group finance chief Li Tian; Singapore froze hundreds of millions of USD; Taiwan seized luxury cars and other assets; and South Korea froze about 64 million USD.

Freezing is not confiscation, and confiscation is not distribution.The legal basis and disposal priorities of each country are completely different.

The United States tends to transfer the Bitcoin to the federal treasury, while Cambodia wants real estate awarded to the state. There is no binding cross-border distribution mechanism among the parties. Whoever actually controls the asset carrier holds the initiative in disposal.

What victims face is not one lawsuit, but seven mutually disconnected lawsuits.

04. Why Victims Cannot Get a Share of the Money

The sharpest contradiction is concentrated in the United States.

Several legal teams representing hundreds of victims submitted civil claims to the federal court for the Eastern District of New York, seeking proportional compensation from the 127,000 Bitcoin. The U.S. Department of Justice quickly sought to dismiss them entirely.

The core reason for dismissal is that no on-chain correspondence can be found between the victims' money and the seized Bitcoin.

What victims were defrauded into transferring was mostly fiat currency or USDT (a stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar). After flowing into the money laundering network, this money became mining farm operating funds. The seized Bitcoin, however, was inventory accumulated by the mining pool and, after multiple layers of laundering, is difficult to match on-chain one-to-one with any single defrauded fund.

In other words,the money that was defrauded and the coins that were seized are not legally the same asset.Victims cannot participate in distribution as holders of property rights and can only wait for far-off administrative remedies.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), in its Coin Laundry series of investigations, criticized that the Department of Justice has never disclosed the technical details of how it obtained the private keys, yet used the strictest evidentiary standards to dismiss victims' claims. Rights protection lawyers call this "secondary harm."

The victim advocacy organization "Operation Clover" called on Congress to establish a special compensation fund that bypasses the on-chain tracing threshold and compensates according to the proportion of verified losses.

But another force is also competing for this asset.Legislators such as Wyoming Senator Lummis advocate allocating the 127,000 Bitcoin into a proposed "U.S. National Strategic Bitcoin Reserve" to be held permanently as an inflation-resistant asset.

Victim organizations publicly condemned this:taking plundered assets into a national reserve is a double failure of law and morality.

The rupture of on-chain tracing, the rigidity of the forfeiture system, and the game among multiple sovereign states—three thresholds stack up. Victims face the same reality:the money is right there on-chain, visible, but impossible to get back.

This money belongs to everyone, and to no one.