PANews reported on March 11 that, according to Bloomberg, lawyers for Chen Zhi, accused of being the head of a large-scale "pig butchering" scam ring, filed a motion in New York federal court this week to dismiss the U.S. government's seizure of a batch of Bitcoin related to him. The lawyers argued that the prosecution's allegations that Chen Zhi oversaw the scam park lacked specific evidence and were merely general descriptions of the situation in Cambodia. They also questioned the timeline of the cryptocurrency seizure, stating that the Bitcoin could not possibly be proceeds of fraud or money laundering.

In October of last year, the U.S. Department of Justice announced the seizure of 127,271 bitcoins controlled by Chen Zhi, at the time valued at approximately $15 billion. Chen Zhi was stripped of his Cambodian citizenship and extradited to China in January of this year. Following U.S. and UK sanctions, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, and other regions have frozen or seized over $1 billion in assets. Human rights organizations point out that after the closure of the fraud operation, thousands of trafficked workers have fled from Sihanoukville and other areas, facing the risk of being re-trafficking.