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.
> 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
> 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?
> 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.
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.)
China only began executing those pig-butcherers when the EAO that was providing protection to Chinese pig-butchering gangs in that region of Myanmar (Kachin Independence Army) re-flipped towards India recently [0] and had begun to ignore China [1] and rerouting rare earths and other goods to India [2]
Meanwhile, China never cracked down against similar scams in Cambodia. Most notably, Prince Group remains unsanctioned in China and it's leadership are Mainland Chinese in origin.
While pig butchering (along with opium and human trafficking and other organized crime activities) are a major reason behind Chinese involvement in Myanmar, ignoring the very real proxy war going on between Chinese and Indian interests in Myanmar fails to contextualize some of the decisions that both countries make within Myanmar.
This also explains why you don't see a similar crackdown in Cambodia, which is solidly within the Chinese sphere at this point.
That's interesting - I had seen some news articles reporting that some Chinese pig butchering scammers were encouraging others to target foreigners only, and exclude the mainland Chinese. Like this one: https://globalinitiative.net/analysis/chinas-acquiescence-to...
It's reminiscent of stories about Russian malware doing nothing on machines with Cyrillic keyboard layouts.
Yep, but notice how that article is about Kokang in Myanmar as well.
Cambodia continues to have scam centers targeting Putonghua speakers (including PRC nationals), but there hasn't been a similar crackdown on such activities due to Chinese pressure.
The crackdown in Kokang happened after China flipped to supporting the Tatmadaw against the Northern Alliance [0] and India began peeling historically India-aligned members of the alliance like the KIA and the Arakan Army back into Indian orbit [1].
P.S. Circa 2 years ago, a large portion of Chinese in SF Chinatown became Kokang and Cambodian Chinese. Bamar, Kuki-Zo, and Kachin Myanmarese primarily reside in Daly City, Ingleside/Outer Mission, and Oakland/East Bay.
SF has a lot of Asian and Latiné subcultures and communities - it's kind of insane how underdocumented it is under the guise of "Asian" and "Latino"
> we are at war with many countries all the time, most of it is cold
Like whom? We (and let's be honest, every other great power) are at war with many countries all of the time, and while they may be cold for long stretches, they absolutely (a) go hot from time to time and (b) are constantly threatening to go hot.
To me "war" is a state of "no rules" hurting. IE nuclear, biological, any weapon goes. Anything less is an exercise in restraint - even if still quite terrible in it's own right.
Which means there are lots of "exercises" of varying lethality, risk profiles, spheres of influence, etc. And yes many countries are jockeying against other countries in varying ways.
Large scale scams against other countries could be seen as an unintended (not a planned government action) exercise that is condoned by the government.
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.
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.
You're probably joking, but even if crypto was totally anonymous, running a massive criminal human trafficking empire in the real world is very non-anonymous.
Crypto anonymity is still possible if you don't plan to spend your ill-gotten millions or billions particularly quickly. But, of course, you don't get to having a massive active criminal empire that way.
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
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
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.
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?
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.
Allowing them to do what? The feds are saying they already have the keys, so either they are lying, or they already had the means to get the keys. Which would be the juicy part of the story.
Yes, and the other big questions are how they even know about the existence of the bitcoin and then how they were able to demonstrate sufficient probable cause to a judge that A) the bitcoin belongs to the suspect, and B) this bitcoin is the direct proceeds of the charged crimes. Given the extremely unusual circumstances around this seizure, its unprecedented size and the complete lack of details - I suspect something new and interesting has happened here.
Unfortunately, we may never find out unless they manage to arrest the suspect, which seems unlikely. The more interesting scenario might be if the Prince Group files suit challenging the seizure. In that case, the government would not only have to produce evidence proving A and B above, but also that the evidence wasn't obtained illegally (like from secret NSA wiretaps on domestic Cambodian telecoms or targeted covert hacking). Given the circumstances, it's hard to imagine the FBI being able to offer plausible 'parallel construction' to support the legality of the evidence.
> Those funds (the Defendant Cryptocurrency) are presently in the custody of the U.S. government.
> The defendant and his co-conspirators subsequently used some of the criminal proceeds for luxury travel and entertainment and to make extravagant purchases such as watches, yachts, private jets, vacation homes, high-end collectables, and rare artwork, including a Picasso painting purchased through an auction house in New York City.
My guess some of defendants were in New York or around the US. You can be a criminal master mind and also be a complete f*king idiot.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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
> 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?
The amount of bitcoin siezed here is about 30% of the Cambodia GDP...
It's a small / under developed country
the economy is not that big to start with :)
GDP $49.8 Billion (nominal; 2025)
Some examples
https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/cambodia...
> 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.
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.)
China only began executing those pig-butcherers when the EAO that was providing protection to Chinese pig-butchering gangs in that region of Myanmar (Kachin Independence Army) re-flipped towards India recently [0] and had begun to ignore China [1] and rerouting rare earths and other goods to India [2]
Meanwhile, China never cracked down against similar scams in Cambodia. Most notably, Prince Group remains unsanctioned in China and it's leadership are Mainland Chinese in origin.
While pig butchering (along with opium and human trafficking and other organized crime activities) are a major reason behind Chinese involvement in Myanmar, ignoring the very real proxy war going on between Chinese and Indian interests in Myanmar fails to contextualize some of the decisions that both countries make within Myanmar.
This also explains why you don't see a similar crackdown in Cambodia, which is solidly within the Chinese sphere at this point.
[0] - https://www.stimson.org/2025/rare-earths-and-realpolitik-fut...
[1] - https://www.irrawaddy.com/news/war-against-the-junta/ignorin...
[2] - https://www.reuters.com/world/china/india-explores-rare-eart...
That's interesting - I had seen some news articles reporting that some Chinese pig butchering scammers were encouraging others to target foreigners only, and exclude the mainland Chinese. Like this one: https://globalinitiative.net/analysis/chinas-acquiescence-to...
It's reminiscent of stories about Russian malware doing nothing on machines with Cyrillic keyboard layouts.
Yep, but notice how that article is about Kokang in Myanmar as well.
Cambodia continues to have scam centers targeting Putonghua speakers (including PRC nationals), but there hasn't been a similar crackdown on such activities due to Chinese pressure.
The crackdown in Kokang happened after China flipped to supporting the Tatmadaw against the Northern Alliance [0] and India began peeling historically India-aligned members of the alliance like the KIA and the Arakan Army back into Indian orbit [1].
P.S. Circa 2 years ago, a large portion of Chinese in SF Chinatown became Kokang and Cambodian Chinese. Bamar, Kuki-Zo, and Kachin Myanmarese primarily reside in Daly City, Ingleside/Outer Mission, and Oakland/East Bay.
SF has a lot of Asian and Latiné subcultures and communities - it's kind of insane how underdocumented it is under the guise of "Asian" and "Latino"
[0] - https://www.stimson.org/2025/too-little-too-late-china-steps...
[1] - https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/india-extends-unp...
[dead]
that's a pretty naive view of war. we are at war with many countries all the time, most of it is cold.
> we are at war with many countries all the time, most of it is cold
Like whom? We (and let's be honest, every other great power) are at war with many countries all of the time, and while they may be cold for long stretches, they absolutely (a) go hot from time to time and (b) are constantly threatening to go hot.
I this similar concept, differently.
To me "war" is a state of "no rules" hurting. IE nuclear, biological, any weapon goes. Anything less is an exercise in restraint - even if still quite terrible in it's own right.
Which means there are lots of "exercises" of varying lethality, risk profiles, spheres of influence, etc. And yes many countries are jockeying against other countries in varying ways.
Large scale scams against other countries could be seen as an unintended (not a planned government action) exercise that is condoned by the government.
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...
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?
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.
> 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.
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.
You're probably joking, but even if crypto was totally anonymous, running a massive criminal human trafficking empire in the real world is very non-anonymous.
Crypto anonymity is still possible if you don't plan to spend your ill-gotten millions or billions particularly quickly. But, of course, you don't get to having a massive active criminal empire that way.
At that scale, you have massive influence within the Cambodian government, so you're not worried about "getting caught" in the traditional sense.
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
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
Had they thought $1B was enough they would have missed out on $14B.
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?
As I understand it, they persuade their marks to transfer bitcoin to accounts they control.
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.
It may not be a hack, but a warrant like 'Hey Google, give us access to this guy's Gmail.'
You can’t get a warrant for a bitcoin wallet right?
https://xkcd.com/538/
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.
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...
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...
Scam, Inc from The Economist is worth the subscription for 1 month. Very in depth.
https://www.economist.com/audio/podcasts/scam-inc
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.
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?
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.
Allowing them to do what? The feds are saying they already have the keys, so either they are lying, or they already had the means to get the keys. Which would be the juicy part of the story.
> they already had the means to get the keys.
Yes, and the other big questions are how they even know about the existence of the bitcoin and then how they were able to demonstrate sufficient probable cause to a judge that A) the bitcoin belongs to the suspect, and B) this bitcoin is the direct proceeds of the charged crimes. Given the extremely unusual circumstances around this seizure, its unprecedented size and the complete lack of details - I suspect something new and interesting has happened here.
Unfortunately, we may never find out unless they manage to arrest the suspect, which seems unlikely. The more interesting scenario might be if the Prince Group files suit challenging the seizure. In that case, the government would not only have to produce evidence proving A and B above, but also that the evidence wasn't obtained illegally (like from secret NSA wiretaps on domestic Cambodian telecoms or targeted covert hacking). Given the circumstances, it's hard to imagine the FBI being able to offer plausible 'parallel construction' to support the legality of the evidence.
According to the indictment:
> Those funds (the Defendant Cryptocurrency) are presently in the custody of the U.S. government.
> The defendant and his co-conspirators subsequently used some of the criminal proceeds for luxury travel and entertainment and to make extravagant purchases such as watches, yachts, private jets, vacation homes, high-end collectables, and rare artwork, including a Picasso painting purchased through an auction house in New York City.
My guess some of defendants were in New York or around the US. You can be a criminal master mind and also be a complete f*king idiot.
Glad they got somewhere with that. It's a bit shocking some of the stuff that goes on out there.
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.
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.
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...
Would these money be returned to the victims?
Why would the government bother prosecuting/seizing it if the money was going to the victims?
That’s how it’s supposed to work. But these days who knows.
“Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®"
https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-d-libertari...
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.
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...
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...
Related:
U.S. Sanctions Cambodian Conglomerate, Citing Role in 'Pig-Butchering' Scams
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45584418
Thanks, we'll merge that thread hither