The Prince Group: The $15 Billion Pig Butchering Factory Built on Human Trafficking

Chen Zhi ran forced-labor scam compounds across Cambodia. The DOJ's largest-ever forfeiture action. 146 sanctions targets. Billions in stolen Bitcoin. The man got deported to China instead of a US courtroom.

Prince Group scam compound network

The largest crypto forfeiture in DOJ history was not about a hacker or an exchange collapse. It was about pig butchering factories staffed by trafficked humans, run by a Chinese businessman operating out of Cambodia, who turned romance scams into a multibillion-dollar industrial operation. His name is Chen Zhi. The US government wants $15 billion in Bitcoin connected to his network. They will probably never get it.

Chen Zhi built the Prince Group into a conglomerate that looked like a real estate and hospitality empire. Behind the front, US prosecutors say he directed scam compounds where thousands of people - many of them trafficking victims - worked shifts running romance-and-investment fraud on victims worldwide. The industry calls it pig butchering. The Chinese phrase "sha zhu pan" means to fatten the pig before slaughter. Build a relationship. Gain trust. Steer the victim toward a fake crypto investment platform. The victim deposits real money. The returns look great on screen. When they try to withdraw, the money is gone.

The scale was staggering. US authorities allege the network processed billions through cryptocurrency, using shell companies, fake trading platforms, and money laundering infrastructure spanning multiple countries. In October 2025, the DOJ filed its largest-ever forfeiture action, seeking roughly $15 billion in Bitcoin plus hundreds of millions in real estate and other assets.

The same month, the US Treasury's OFAC and the UK's Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office jointly designated 146 targets within the Prince Group network. The sanctions cited: construction and operation of scam compounds, human trafficking, modern-day slavery, industrial-scale cyberfraud, and money laundering. This was not a crypto scam with some bad behavior attached. It was a transnational criminal organization that used crypto as its financial backbone.

The human trafficking element separates this case from every other crypto fraud story. Workers were recruited through fake job postings, lured to Southeast Asia, and had their passports confiscated on arrival. Those who refused to scam were beaten. Those who tried to escape were sold to other compounds. A UN report from 2025 warned these operations were expanding on "an industrial scale" across Cambodia, Myanmar, and Laos. The Prince Group was the biggest.

Chen Zhi's Cambodian citizenship was revoked in December 2025. He was arrested in Cambodia in January 2026. Then he was deported to China, not extradited to the United States where he faces indictment. Beijing wanted him. Washington wanted him. Beijing won. Whether Chen faces meaningful accountability in China is an open question. Chinese authorities have not disclosed charges.

The jurisdictional fight is the quiet part that matters most. The US spent years building a case, filed the biggest forfeiture in DOJ history, sanctioned 146 entities, and coordinated with allies. Then the suspect was sent to a country with its own agenda. The $15 billion in Bitcoin is still out there. The scam compounds have shown a pattern of relocating and restarting under new management.

Chainalysis estimates $35 billion in cryptocurrency was sent to fraud schemes in 2025. The Prince Group was the single largest node. Dismantling it was a milestone. But the factory model it pioneered - combining trafficking, professionalized scam operations, and crypto laundering into one integrated business - has already been copied across the region. The franchise is out there.