The United States Department of Justice files what they are calling the “largest ever forfeiture action” against the founder and chairman of Prince Holding Group, a Cambodia-based multinational conglomerate, for “wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering” across several “forced-labor scam compounds”.
According to the DOJ’s statement, “Individuals held against their will in the compounds engaged in cryptocurrency investment fraud schemes, known as 'pig butchering' scams, that stole billions of dollars from victims in the United States and around the world.”
“Pig Butchering” is a crypto investment fraud scheme where threat actors build a level of trust with potential victims in order to manipulate them into investing their money in fake crypto.
This may come in the form of social engineering, wherein the scammer pretends to be friendly or romantically interested in the victim over the Internet. Once they believe the victim trusts them enough, they will move on to suggesting that they invest in a crypto opportunity; however, the websites and platforms they are told to use will be fraudulent or made to spoof real services.
In this case, the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York and the Department’s National Security Division filed a civil forfeiture against “127,271 bitcoin, currently worth approximately $15 billion.”
According to Attorney General Pam Bondi, “By dismantling a criminal empire built on forced labor and deception, we are sending a clear message that the United States will use every tool at its disposal to defend victims, recover stolen assets, and bring to justice those who exploit the vulnerable for profit.”
In the DOJ’s statement, Assistant Attorney General John A Eisenberg is quoted as saying the conditions the trafficked workers were in were “prison-like compounds and forced to carry out online scams on an industrial scale.”
The defendant remains at large.