"Prince Group" Chen Zhi is arrested in Cambodia and extradited to China, the ownership of the "14 billion USD Bitcoin" remains a mystery

2026-01-08 16:42:44

The founder of the Cambodian “Prince Group,” who was accused of leading a $14 billion cryptocurrency scam and charged by the U.S. government, Chen Zhi, was arrested in Cambodia on January 6 and has recently been deported back to China.
The Cambodian Ministry of Interior announced that the arrest operation was carried out after months of joint transnational criminal investigations, and at the request of Beijing authorities to extradite Chen Zhi to China, though it did not disclose whether he faces charges in China.
The official statement mentioned that Chen Zhi’s Cambodian nationality was revoked at the end of last year; he had renounced Chinese citizenship in 2014 and became a Cambodian citizen.
In October last year, the U.S. Department of Justice and the Treasury Department filed charges against Chen Zhi for suspected wire fraud, money laundering, and forced labor related to “pig butchering” scams, seizing 127,271 bitcoins (approximately $14.2 billion), along with hundreds of millions of dollars in real estate and other assets.
However, this case has now transcended simple transnational crime fighting and has evolved into a political struggle between the U.S. and China over the ownership of $14 billion worth of Bitcoin.
In November last year, China’s National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center issued a shocking statement accusing the U.S. government of orchestrating a cyber theft, claiming that over 120,000 bitcoins were hacked from a Chinese mining pool in 2020, and some of the stolen bitcoins later “coincidentally” appeared on the list of assets seized from Chen Zhi by U.S. authorities.
U.S. authorities insist that the seized bitcoins originate from fraud and money laundering proceeds related to Chen Zhi and the Prince Group entities, and are unrelated to the hacking incident alleged by China.

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