Images broadcast on central Chinese television on January 7 shocked public opinion: A man with a head and hands was handcuffed and escorted off a plane in Beijing.
That is Chen Zhi, 38 years old, founder of Prince Holding Group in Cambodia, accused of running one of the largest fraud empires in Asia.
Chen Zhi was arrested in Cambodia and extradited to China, closing many years of speculation about the legal fate of this person with deep ties. But in parallel with that "fall", a big question remains: Where did Chen Zhi's 15 billion USD Bitcoin disappear?
Record seizure" of the US
In October 2025, the US Department of Justice announced that it had seized 127,271 Bitcoins related to Chen Zhi, calling this the largest cryptocurrency seizure ever.
The US and the UK simultaneously imposed sanctions on 146 individuals and organizations related to Prince Group - considered the most aggressive campaign against cryptocurrency fraud networks.
However, according to China, the story may actually have started 5 years earlier.
The 2020 hack
At the end of December 2020, Chen Zhi's Bitcoin mining pool was seriously cyberattacked. More than 127,000 Bitcoins - then worth about 4 billion USD - disappeared in a short time.
Chinese state media reported that Chen Zhi posted more than 1,500 large reward messages, calling on anyone to help track down and return the stolen Bitcoin. But all efforts were in vain, the money "evaporated" completely.
What is noteworthy is that the number of US Bitcoins declared to be seized in 2025 almost perfectly matches the number of Bitcoins Chen Zhi lost in the hack in 2020.
In November 2025, the China National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center (CVERC) announced a technical report on the incident. The most notable conclusion: The stolen Bitcoins remained immobile for nearly 4 years, only being transferred to new wallets in mid-2024.
According to CVERC, this behavior is "clearly not suitable for ordinary hackers", who often seek to dispose of assets as quickly as possible. The report argues that this model is more suitable for a state-level hacker organization.
The blockchain analysis platform Arkham Intelligence then labeled the final target wallets as US government wallets.
Lawyer Du Guodong, partner at Haotian Law Firm (Beijing), said that the US indictment does not explain how Washington obtained a private key to control this amount of Bitcoin. "That shows the possibility that the US seized Chen Zhi's Bitcoin very early, even from 2020," he told Chinese media.
Washington silent
To date, the US Department of Justice has not commented on the accusations from China. The indictment at the New York Federal Court details Chen Zhi's alleged acts - from fraud complexes, forced labor to money laundering - but does not mention how the investigating agency accessed cryptocurrency assets.
Meanwhile, Chen Zhi hired the law firm Boies Schiller Flexner to sue for the confiscation of Bitcoin.
Black eat black
Chinese media described the incident with the controversial phrase: "Black eat black" - criminals swallow criminals. According to this argument, the US seized Bitcoin from Chen Zhi but said nothing about refunding money to victims worldwide.
The forgotten side in the US-China verbal battle is thousands of victims of fraud lines. Prince Group is accused of operating at least 10 forced labor complexes in Cambodia, forcing trafficked people to carry out online scams. Last year alone, US officials estimated that fraud networks in Southeast Asia had appropriated at least 10 billion USD from US victims.
15 billion USD of Bitcoin, in theory, could compensate for some of that damage. But so far, the US has not announced any compensation plans.
