U.S. put 127,271 bitcoin in custody as DOJ opened its largest forfeiture action

Federal prosecutors on October 14, 2025 unsealed an indictment against Prince Holding Group founder and chairman Chen Zhi and filed a civil complaint seeking forfeiture of approximately 127,271 bitcoin already in U.S. custody. The Justice Department valued the bitcoin at approximately $15 billion in its announcement and called the complaint the largest forfeiture action in the department’s history.

The scale made the case a landmark for digital-asset enforcement, but the procedural language mattered. The United States had custody of the bitcoin; it had not yet won a final forfeiture judgment. Chen was charged with wire-fraud conspiracy and money-laundering conspiracy, remained at large on October 14, and had not been convicted. The indictment and civil complaint set out government allegations that would still have to be proved in court.

What prosecutors alleged

The indictment, returned by a federal grand jury on October 8 and unsealed on October 14 in the Eastern District of New York, alleged that Chen directed forced-labor compounds in Cambodia where trafficked workers conducted fraudulent cryptocurrency investment schemes. Prosecutors said victims were cultivated through online relationships and induced to transfer cryptocurrency on the promise of investment gains.

The accompanying civil complaint alleged that the 127,271 bitcoin constituted proceeds or instrumentalities of wire fraud and property involved in money laundering. It described large volumes of bitcoin being split across many addresses and later recombined—a pattern prosecutors characterized as “spraying” and “funneling” intended to complicate the audit trail. The complaint said the full amount was later moved to additional addresses and was in U.S. custody by the filing date. The public records did not explain the operational method by which the government obtained control of the private keys.

That gap is important. A court filing can document the government’s tracing theory and custody claim without disclosing investigative techniques. It also means the event-day record supports the fact of asserted U.S. custody, not outside speculation about how the transfer occurred.

A coordinated financial crackdown

The forfeiture complaint was one part of a broader U.S.-U.K. action announced on October 14. The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control designated Prince Group as a transnational criminal organization and imposed sanctions on 146 targets within the network. The United Kingdom separately froze assets and imposed sanctions on Chen, Prince Group and associated entities.

Treasury also finalized a rule cutting Huione Group off from the U.S. financial system. That action was announced alongside the Prince Group sanctions but addressed a separate Cambodia-based financial network that Treasury said had laundered proceeds from virtual-currency scams and cyber heists. Keeping the two actions distinct prevents the Huione allegations from being incorrectly folded into the criminal case against Chen.

The coordinated measures mattered institutionally because they combined three tools with different legal effects: a criminal indictment against an individual, a civil action against property, and sanctions restricting dealings with named persons and entities. None substituted for the others, and none by itself established every allegation in the court filings.

Why the bitcoin figure mattered

The 127,271-bitcoin total turned an online-investment-fraud case into a major custody event for the Bitcoin market. DOJ’s approximately $15 billion valuation was a contemporaneous agency estimate, not a fixed recovery amount. Bitcoin trades continuously across venues, the department did not identify a pricing source or timestamp, and the dollar value could change while the coin quantity remained constant.

The filing also demonstrated how a public ledger can assist tracing without making attribution automatic. Investigators described address clusters and transaction patterns, but the government’s case also relied on alleged control of keys, internal records and links among wallets, exchanges and business entities. Blockchain visibility supplied part of the evidence; it did not eliminate the need to establish ownership, criminal proceeds and the legal basis for forfeiture.

As of October 14, 2025, the unresolved questions were substantial: whether prosecutors could secure Chen’s appearance, whether a court would order forfeiture, how competing victim claims would be handled, and what ultimately would happen to the bitcoin. The verified development was narrower and still historic—the United States said it controlled 127,271 bitcoin and had begun the Justice Department’s largest-ever forfeiture action.