On October 14, news emerged from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York (EDNY) that the U.S. government is seeking to confiscate 127,000 Bitcoins seized in operations involving the Cambodian BCH group, amounting to over $14 billion at current prices. If this confiscation is successfully executed, the U.S. government will become the entity holding the largest amount of Bitcoins. Below is a detailed analysis of this case:

Over the past five years, criminals behind the global pig-butchering scams have stolen hundreds of billions of dollars from around the world. Today, law enforcement has launched one of the largest operations to date against this massive fraud industry, targeting the operators of modern slavery scam hubs across Southeast Asia. In this region, hundreds of thousands of human trafficking victims are forced to carry out scam activities for criminal groups.

On Tuesday, officials from the US and UK collaborated to take action against a large criminal organization and its leader in Cambodia, who is said to operate several notorious scam centers in the country. The US Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced that it has imposed financial sanctions on 146 targets associated with the newly identified BCH Group transnational criminal organization, encompassing individuals and shell companies linked to this criminal empire. As part of a comprehensive operation involving the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the US Department of Justice (DOJ) also seized nearly 130,000 Bitcoins, which were valued at approximately $15 billion at the time of the announcement—this is the largest seizure of cryptocurrency by the US to date.

The OFAC pointed out that the BCH Group's criminal entities consist of the local Cambodian company BCH Holdings Group, its chairman and CEO Chen Zhi, and its affiliates and business partners. The company claims to be one of the largest corporate groups in Cambodia, with operations in real estate development and financial services. However, the Department of Justice alleges that Chen Zhi and other executives secretly built the BCH Group into one of the largest transnational criminal organizations in Asia, operating at least 10 scam parks within Cambodia.