Bloomberg: Attorney Chen Zhi is demanding the return of 127,000 bitcoins seized by the United States, arguing that the funds could not have been obtained through fraud or money laundering.

On March 11, Bloomberg reported that Chen Zhi's lawyers filed a motion this week in a New York federal court to rescind a U.S. government seizure of a batch of Bitcoin related to Chen Zhi. The lawyers argued that many of the charges against Chen Zhi were "obvious and clearly false," and that the allegations regarding his management of a fraud park were merely "vague statements and background comments on the situation in Cambodia." They questioned the timeline of the seizure of the cryptocurrency and stated that the Bitcoin could not have been obtained through fraud or money laundering. The FBI discovered that a close aide to Chen Zhi boasted that the Prince Group profited more than $30 million daily from "pig butchering" scams and related illegal activities in 2018. Some of the funds were used to fund cryptocurrency mining operations, producing Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies that could be easily transferred across borders. Previously, U.S. federal prosecutors charged Chen Zhi with money laundering and wire fraud, and in October 2025, it was revealed that the U.S. had seized 127,271 Bitcoins that he had previously controlled—a record seizure at the time, valued at $15 billion. According to sources familiar with the matter, shortly after the sanctions were imposed, key members of Chen Zhi's Singapore-based company moved to Phnom Penh, residing in luxury residences within the city. Chen Zhi has adopted a hardline stance, hiring top US lawyers to attempt to recover his cryptocurrency and challenge the US seizure, which Prince Group claims is based on "baseless accusations." The struggle remains financially supported because several companies controlled by him or his associates have not been sanctioned.