fascinating history of the rise and fall of one of the world's top scam lords operating out of #Cambodia, Prince Group CEO Chen Zhi from one of the incredibly brave Cambodian reporters on the ground who've been tracking the takeover of the country by Chinese organized crime, funded by crypto scams.

Zhi was just arrested and extradited (to china) and the US government seized $13 billion worth of his #bitcoin a few months ago (China got the man, US got the bitcoins).

#PrinceGroup and the massive #pigbutchering cyberscam slave compounds Chen Zhi operated are among the biggest users of #Tether's #stablecoin #USDT on Trump business partner #JustinSun's blockchain #Tron.

https://huangyan.substack.com/p/the-rise-and-fall-of-chen-zhi

#ChenZhi #PrinceGroup #HuionePay #HuioneGuarantee #crypto #uspol #vietnam #Myanmar #infosec #scam #scams #fraud #corruption #asean #organizedcrime #PhnomPenh #HunSen #mafia #chineseMafia #Sihanoukville

the US finally moved on Prince Group, connected to Huione Guarantee, the world’s largest dark-ish market for fraud, drugs, weapons, slaves, etc. that operated out of Cambodia.

that’s another $14 billion worth of stolen crypto that will now sit in the hands of the U.S. government in the “strategic bitcoin reserve” instead of being repatriated to those who were defrauded.

one interesting detail i was surprised by was that Prince Group had a #NYC operation going. a detail i was not surprised by but didn't know about was that #Texas taxpayers have been subsidizing #pigbutchering fraud #moneylaundering.

* forfeiture filing: https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/media/1416266/dl?inline
* coindesk: https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2025/10/14/u-s-targets-cambodian-pig-butchering-takes-usd14b-in-bitcoin-as-biggest-ever-seizure

#Huione #HuioneGuarantee #PrinceGroup #Cambodia #ASEAN #SEasia #ChenZhi #china #crime #fraud #scam #scams #txpol #jingliao #shazupan #taiwan #vietnam #russia

a few weeks ago right before #Israel attacked #Iran #Tether froze a #Tron wallet that had over the course of a year managed to receive almost $2 billion, at least $1.2 bn of which came from #Binance (which historically did huge business in Iran).

there was only $2.5 million in the wallet at the time of the freeze but in terms of how much money flowed through it, it's the 4th highest volume wallet ever frozen.

based on the fact that another wallet frozen ca. the same time w/similar usage patterns turned out to be linkable to #Hezbollah, the govt of #Iran, and a dark market for nation state sized orders of weapons & #drugs (#HuionePay / #HuioneGuarantee), I have a hunch this wallet was also used by the #IRGC to fund its proxies in the region like the #Houthis and #Hezbollah and #Israel has chosen not to disclose that it was responsible for the seizure yet.

* arkham view of wallet: https://intel.arkm.com/explorer/address/TPAUZAQFjhPvbNdSp22KqzSHHkAvKLgXjn
* similar wallet: https://universeodon.com/@cryptadamist/114746678768755105

#Huione #JustinSun

NYT deep-ish dive on the world's largest cryptocurrency driven marketplace for drugs, weapons, #moneylaundering services, slaves, etc: #HuioneGuarantee in Camboida.

* NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/23/world/asia/cambodia-money-laundering-huione.html
* no paywall: https://archive.ph/CGkoc

#crypto #crime #cambodia #myanmar #SEAsia #pigbutchering #crime #corruption #Tether #EvolveBank

"Huione Pay, the banking arm of what’s been called the world’s 'largest ever illicit online marketplace' (#HuioneGuarantee) has been stripped of its banking license, the National Bank of #Cambodia confirmed to RFA this week."

There's been previous reports of tens of billions of dollars moving through Huiones "anything goes" marketplace for weapons, drugs, slaves, etc. so this is possibly an interesting escalation in the crackdown on Chinese organized crime in southeast asia that seems to have been orchestrated by the #PRC (though some are sceptical if it will end up making any real difference give Huione connections to the Cambodian government).

https://www.rfa.org/english/cambodia/2025/03/06/huione-cambodia-cyberscam-cryptocurrency/

#PigButchering #Huionepay #SEAsia #scams #Crime #fraud #asiapol #myanmar #thailand #laos

#HuioneGuarantee, the world's largest darknet market¹ for things like drugs, weapons, and slaves (yes, slaves) that's deeply tied to laundering #pigbutchering scam proceeds, is launching its own dollar backed #stablecoin to compete with #Tether, apparently on its own new blockchain.

welcome to the future.

https://www.elliptic.co/blog/huione-largest-ever-illicit-online-marketplace-stablecoin

¹ Huione Guarantee probably shouldn't technically be called a "darknet market" because i'm not sure it bothers to operate on the darknet and also they have significantly lower moral standards than most DNM operators around things like weapons and slaves.

#DNM #darknet #crypto #cryptocurrency #bitcoin #stablecoin #uspol #uspolitics #eupol #fraud #crime #corruption #cambodia #SEAsia #ASEAN #moneylaundering #organizedcrime #darknetmarket