Is Bitcoin "stolen" or "taken over"? The mysterious connection between $14 billion Lubian old coins and the U.S. government.

Original Title: Billions in Bitcoin Tied to Alleged Scammer Wanted by DOJ Are on the Move

Original author: Sander Lutz

Source of the original text:

Compiled by: Daisy, Mars Finance

Billions of dollars in Bitcoin related to a wanted suspect by the U.S. Department of Justice are being transferred.

The wallet associated with Chen Zhi transferred nearly 2 billion dollars' worth of Bitcoin on Wednesday. Last week, the U.S. government charged him with a $14 billion crypto fraud case.

Brief content:

According to data from Arkham Intelligence, wallets associated with the suspected fraudster Chen Zhi have transferred approximately $1.7 billion worth of Bitcoin, which has recently been sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury.

The transferred 15,959 bitcoins appear to be related to Chen Zhi's Prince Holding Group, which prosecutors claim operates a global cryptocurrency scam and forced labor network.

Chen Zhi is still at large, and investigators are questioning how the U.S. government obtained another $14 billion worth of Bitcoin related to his activities.

According to on-chain data, the mastermind suspected of orchestrating a $14 billion crypto scam, who is currently evading capture by the U.S. government, has begun transferring billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin to new wallets.

According to an analysis by Arkham Intelligence, the wallet associated with Chen Zhi—who holds dual citizenship in China and Cambodia and is allegedly at the core of a global “pig butchering” crypto scam network—has transferred nearly $2 billion in Bitcoin from wallets recently sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury to new addresses.

A total of 15,959 bitcoins have been transferred from the addresses blacklisted by the Treasury last week to four new wallets. As of now, the total value of these tokens exceeds $1.72 billion.

Chen Zhi is the founder and chairman of Prince Holding Group, a multinational enterprise group headquartered in Cambodia. The U.S. Department of Justice accuses Prince Holding of being at the center of a global cryptocurrency fraud network involving forced labor and resulting in billions of dollars in victim losses.

Last week, federal prosecutors announced criminal charges against Chen Zhi for telecommunications fraud and money laundering, and he is currently still at large.

The prosecutor simultaneously disclosed that the U.S. government has seized over $14 billion worth of Bitcoin from Prince Group and is advancing the largest seizure action in the history of the Department of Justice.

The funds transferred today related to Prince Holding's wallet are not the same batch as the 14 billion US dollars in Bitcoin currently controlled by the US government. These funds belong to other assets of the organization. Arkham speculates that this transfer may be to obscure the connection with the wallet that has been sanctioned by the US.

There are still many uncertainties regarding Chen Zhi and the Bitcoin related to Prince Holdings.

Currently, the 14 billion dollars worth of Bitcoin controlled by the U.S. government has recently been confirmed by Arkham to be the same as the so-called stolen funds from the 2020 Chinese mining pool theft incident.

However, the U.S. Department of Justice pointed out last week that Lubian is one of the companies used by Prince Holding to launder scammed Bitcoin.

Therefore, other on-chain analysts recently proposed a viewpoint: the 14 billion dollars worth of Bitcoin that disappeared in 2020 may have never been stolen at all; or, conversely, this “theft” may have been carried out by the U.S. government or hackers working for the government.

After 2020, this batch of related Bitcoins was only transferred again in the summer of 2024 - transferred to a wallet believed to be controlled by U.S. law enforcement agencies.

The on-chain intelligence company Elliptic recently summarized:

“It is currently unclear how these bitcoins came under the control of the U.S. government. It is also unclear who 'stole' these bitcoins from Chen Zhi or Lubian, or whether a theft actually occurred.”