In a stunning transatlantic sting, UK and US authorities seized a staggering £11.3 billion ($15 billion) Bitcoin fortune on 14 October 2025, crippling the world’s largest romance scam syndicate operating from the shadows of Cambodia.
Masterminded by fugitive tycoon Chen Zhi, the network ensnared heartbroken victims in fake online dalliances, draining their savings into fraudulent crypto traps while laundering billions through luxury London lairs.
This record-breaking Bitcoin haul, paired with frozen mansions and sanctions, marks a fierce 2025 crackdown on global fraud networks, where human traffickers force desperate souls into digital deception for profit.
Unmasking the Romance Scam Empire
Chen Zhi, the shadowy chairman of Cambodia’s Prince Holding Group, built an invisible empire of deceit from Sihanoukville’s glittering casinos hiding brutal scam operations. His operation lured trafficked foreigners—often via bogus job ads—with promises of easy work, only to chain them to keyboards crafting bogus love stories on dating apps.
Victims, under threat of beatings or worse, posed as suitors to UK and US marks, coaxing average losses of £8,000 ($12,274) per scam in 2024, according to Barclays data. By 2025, the syndicate’s tendrils spanned Myanmar and beyond, funnelling £92 million ($141.15 million) in UK losses alone the prior year, with reports surging 20%.
Jin Bei Group, Chen’s leisure arm, masked the grime with seven-storey hotels doubling as scam hubs, laundering crypto windfalls through online gambling proxies. UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper condemned the ‘horrific scam centres‘ ruining lives, as trafficked scammers—many from war zones—endured isolation and violence to extract every penny.
Seizure Strategies: From Crypto Trails to Frozen Assets
The operation unfolded through meticulous transatlantic teamwork. US Department of Justice investigators traced 127,271 Bitcoin wallets to Chen’s fraud proceeds via blockchain forensics. Filed as the biggest Bitcoin forfeiture in DOJ history on 14 October 2025, the £11.3 billion ($17.33 billion) haul targeted laundered gains from coerced crypto cons.
UK Foreign Office sleuths, partnering with City of London Police, zeroed in on 19 London properties—including a £12 million ($18.41 million) Avenue Road mansion and £100 million ($153.42 million) Fenchurch Street tower—registered via British Virgin Islands shells.
Sanctions hit hard: OFAC and FCDO froze assets instantly, barring Chen and his firms from UK finance while US charges loomed for wire fraud and laundering. Investigators unravelled the web through victim tips, dark web intel and forensic audits, revealing how scammers remortgaged homes or plunged families into tens of thousands in debt.
As @FCDOGovUK posted on X, ‘MAJOR ACTION: We’ve sanctioned a Southeast Asian scam network and frozen £100+ million in London properties.’
🚨 MAJOR ACTION: We’ve sanctioned a Southeast Asian scam network and frozen £100+ million in London properties.
This network has trafficked people and forced them into online fraud.
We’re fighting back against dirty money, protecting British nationals.
— Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (@FCDOGovUK) October 14, 2025
This precision strike, blending cyber sleuthing and diplomatic muscle, dismantled a pipeline that globalised heartbreak for Bitcoin bounties.
Ripple Effects: Battling 2025’s Fraud Surge
The Bitcoin bonanza lands amid a 2025 romance scam explosion, with global losses topping £848.35 million ($1.3 billion)—a more than 300% jump from 2020 levels—according to the FBI‘s Internet Crime Complaint Centre. UK Action Fraud logged over 8,000 reports last year, but underreporting masks the true devastation. Fraud Minister Lord Hanson vows, ‘We will not tolerate this’.
Over-60s, hit hardest at £8,000 ($12,274) averages, face isolation amplified by post-pandemic loneliness. Sanctions disrupt the ecosystem, starving traffickers and forcing scam centres underground, yet experts warn of rebounds without global pacts. Attorney-General Pamela Bondi hailed it a ‘significant strike against human trafficking and cyber-enabled financial fraud’.
As UK hosts a fraud summit, this haul funds victim restitution, spotlighting crypto’s dark underbelly where love letters yield ledgers of loss. Communities, from Walsall commuters to Wall Street widows, breathe easier, but vigilance remains key in the endless cat-and-mouse with digital predators.