Doj Seizes $15b in Bitcoin From 'pig Butchering' Scam Based in Cambodia

What is making things worse is rest of the world abandoning Cambodia which justifies scam centers profits as there no other source of income. Cambodia is right next to relatively rich Thailand but has nothing to show - its easy to see how nationalism explodes in such conditions.

Cambodia is claiming they are 'detained' by immigration, and refuse to leave, making it sound like the Koreans themselves are the problem, trying to deflect from the real issue.

It's reminiscent of stories about Russian malware doing nothing on machines with Cyrillic keyboard layouts.

Kachin is not a relevant location of scam centers. You can find articles that claim otherwise, e.g. https://www.ctol.digital/news/inside-worlds-largest-scam-emp... but from the fact that they mention the Thai border and the city of Myawaddy, which is in Kayin/Karen State, it's clear that they're just confusing Kachin and Kayin.

The Kachin Independence Army seems to finance itself through mining instead.

While it's true that some scammers were recently sentenced to death in China https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c78nrx309kzo and this only happened after the Kachin Independence Army disrupted the rare-earth trade with China, that's just a temporal coincidence. The scammers were captured in 2023 in Laukkai in northern Shan State near the Chinese border by the MNDAA (an anti-junta armed group dominated by ethnic Chinese) as part of Operation 1027. China is rumored to have assisted the operation in order to crack down on the scam centers in junta-controlled territory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_1027#Cyber-scamming_... The Kachin Independence Army also participated in Operation 1027, but in Kachin, not Shan.

I don't know about Cambodia.

Formal estimates by who? Given that the GDP is around $50B, these (unsourced) numbers don't even make sense.

(not only for these cambodia originated crimes)

Also keep in mind all the bribes, all the money laundering mentioned in the article by the 100s of affiliated subsidiares of the criminal group all in Cambodia

the big casinos which directly and indirectly support additional laundering

https://www.fincen.gov/system/files/2025-10/Huione-Group-Fin...

https://www.kharon.com/brief/huione-group-cambodia-treasury-...

Every business has revenue / costs

The indictment mentions they were doing 30M/day ~ 10B / year, could be an old message when they were smaller

Guessing that's revenue

They're just one of many organizations in the "industry"

Between 1965 and 1973 US dropped 2,756,941 tones of bombs on 113,717 sites in Cambidia. Thats more bombs than all allies together used in all of World War II.

Tens of people still getting killed by them every year.

https://gsp.yale.edu/sites/default/files/walrus_cambodiabomb...

Yes, and the other big questions are how they even know about the existence of the bitcoin and then how they were able to demonstrate sufficient probable cause to a judge that A) the bitcoin belongs to the suspect, and B) this bitcoin is the direct proceeds of the charged crimes. Given the extremely unusual circumstances around this seizure, its unprecedented size and the complete lack of details - I suspect something new and interesting has happened here.

Unfortunately, we may never find out unless they manage to arrest the suspect, which seems unlikely. The more interesting scenario might be if the Prince Group files suit challenging the seizure. In that case, the government would not only have to produce evidence proving A and B above, but also that the evidence wasn't obtained illegally (like from secret NSA wiretaps on domestic Cambodian telecoms or targeted covert hacking). Given the circumstances, it's hard to imagine the FBI being able to offer plausible 'parallel construction' to support the legality of the evidence.

1. they are lying. The most obvious one. It's legal and is expected that law enforcement lie in the United States.

2. defendant was so dumb he had the funds in a crypto exchange account

3. Law enforcement has no idea what keys or crypto is. Also likely, law enforcement in the US is not required to be competent.

4. defendant was so dumb he landed on a flight in the US. This would be exceptionally stupid

5. The US military or the intelligence community either coerced the keys out of him or just beat the keys out of him. There are no jurisdictional issues with this approach. From what I understand this guy isn't very popular in any country, so few countries would care. Even fewer would want to publicly discuss how their sovereignty was violated

6. A random member of the criminal organization had access to most but not all of the keys. He showed up at a US embassy and said "well I did lots of bad stuff. I'd like to disappear now & not at a location named Guantanmo! How about we cut a deal"

My personal bet is on #3. It's effectively impossible for anyone to prove they don't have the keys. The only person who could do that would the defendant, who has no interest in doing so.

> Those funds (the Defendant Cryptocurrency) are presently in the custody of the U.S. government.

> The defendant and his co-conspirators subsequently used some of the criminal proceeds for luxury travel and entertainment and to make extravagant purchases such as watches, yachts, private jets, vacation homes, high-end collectables, and rare artwork, including a Picasso painting purchased through an auction house in New York City.

My guess some of defendants were in New York or around the US. You can be a criminal master mind and also be a complete f*king idiot.

Admittedly it's doubtful whether this kind of activity would be captured by official statistics.

I know it’s a bit of a get out clause but it’s at least not obvious to me that this wouldn’t contribute, certainly the illegal nature is not a blocker for being counted in GDP.