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DOJ seizes $15B in Bitcoin from 'pig butchering' scam based in Cambodia

cnbc.com

411–420 of 421 posts

Re: DOJ seizes $15B in Bitcoin from 'pig butchering' scam based in Cambodia

#411
For the German HN readers, there’s a really good podcast with some investigative journalism about this exact topic made by the public broadcast services: https://www.ardaudiothek.de/episode/urn:ard:episode:305aa362...

I don’t believe there’s an English translation sadly, but I’d be happy to be proven wrong.

Re: DOJ seizes $15B in Bitcoin from 'pig butchering' scam based in Cambodia

#412
post #115

Wow. $15 billion is an astronomical, nearly unfathomable amount of money in Cambodia. This must have been a huge operation. It's almost 1/3 of the country's entire GDP! Well done DOJ. Hopefully the victims get their money back.

> 1/3 of the country's entire GDP $15 billion is a huge number to be sure, but it's unclear from the article how many years it took to acquire.

Better be "three months of the country's GDP".

Re: DOJ seizes $15B in Bitcoin from 'pig butchering' scam based in Cambodia

#413

Wow. $15 billion is an astronomical, nearly unfathomable amount of money in Cambodia. This must have been a huge operation. It's almost 1/3 of the country's entire GDP! Well done DOJ. Hopefully the victims get their money back.

Not sure if you're joking about the victims getting their money back. In case you're not, they won't. The DOJ adds seized crypto to the American crypto reserve. https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/03/fact-sheet-pr... From the webpage: " The Executive Order begins to resolve the current disjointed handling of cryptocurrencies seized through forfeiture by, and scattered across, various Federal agencies. Current…

Well how would you know who to return it to? It's crypto, the genius system which will totally replace money, which doesn't allow you to track simple things like transaction history and remedy fraud like this.

It's not like a cambodian pig butchering operation is going to keep detailed ledgers of who they scammed and for how much.

Re: DOJ seizes $15B in Bitcoin from 'pig butchering' scam based in Cambodia

#414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cambodian people are suffering, no doubt about it, but what you say about the surge in nationalism and entrenching his position is certainly true; the 'leadership' has only gotten stronger. It's surreal how Cambodians are blindly, even passionately, following the government narrative of evil rapacious Thailand invading innocent peace-loving Cambodia, when there is strong evidence showing it was Cambodia provoking the…

The history here is very clear. Hunsen (the current dictator) jumped ship during pol pots cleanse and came back with Vietnamese and got installed as a savior dictator. Cambodia never had freedom of press or education since then and Thailand "stole our culture" has been thought in school curriculum ever since. It's hard to feel anything but pitty towards Cambodians as resisting this amount of authoritarian brain wash…

Partly true, but let's be clear about who is being indoctrinated about culture.

Khmer culture is basically an offshoot of the original Hindu, and then Buddhist culture from India. The language is the 'latin' of the region and based off sanskrit, and all the temples in the region are modeled on Hindu temples (representations of mount Meru).

Tai people came from SW China and colonized, if not assumed, this extant culture, and also of course intermingled and whatever.

So both populations share a deep and long history and are closely related.

Re: DOJ seizes $15B in Bitcoin from 'pig butchering' scam based in Cambodia

#415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if you're joking about the victims getting their money back. In case you're not, they won't. The DOJ adds seized crypto to the American crypto reserve. https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/03/fact-sheet-pr... From the webpage: " The Executive Order begins to resolve the current disjointed handling of cryptocurrencies seized through forfeiture by, and scattered across, various Federal agencies. Current…

Well how would you know who to return it to? It's crypto, the genius system which will totally replace money, which doesn't allow you to track simple things like transaction history and remedy fraud like this. It's not like a cambodian pig butchering operation is going to keep detailed ledgers of who they scammed and for how much.

> ”Well how would you know who to return it to? It's crypto, … which doesn't allow you to track simple things like transaction history”

That’s not actually correct. The blockchain contains a permanent, immutable, and public record of every transaction.

Obviously you also need a way to connect a given wallet ID (address) back to it’s owner, but if transactions originated from regulated platforms like Binance then they will have those records thanks to KYC/AML rules.

If the transaction originated from a private wallet, a fraud victim could simply submit proof of their wallet ID as part of their claim.

Re: DOJ seizes $15B in Bitcoin from 'pig butchering' scam based in Cambodia

#416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if you're joking about the victims getting their money back. In case you're not, they won't. The DOJ adds seized crypto to the American crypto reserve. https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/03/fact-sheet-pr... From the webpage: " The Executive Order begins to resolve the current disjointed handling of cryptocurrencies seized through forfeiture by, and scattered across, various Federal agencies. Current…

Well how would you know who to return it to? It's crypto, the genius system which will totally replace money, which doesn't allow you to track simple things like transaction history and remedy fraud like this. It's not like a cambodian pig butchering operation is going to keep detailed ledgers of who they scammed and for how much.

[deleted]

Re: DOJ seizes $15B in Bitcoin from 'pig butchering' scam based in Cambodia

#417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compared to Cambodia, sure, but it's an international crime gang, with this particular one being just one branch. I wonder if this was their biggest hoard or if they had more? Really poor financial management to have all that money concentrated that much though. It either means they dropped the ball bigly, or this is spare change for them... although Bitcoin's market cap is $2.24 trillion at the moment, $15 billion i…

> although Bitcoin's market cap is $2.24 trillion at the moment, $15 billion is a significant chunk of that. Literally about 0.67%. I wouldn't call that significant.

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Re: DOJ seizes $15B in Bitcoin from 'pig butchering' scam based in Cambodia

#418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The history here is very clear. Hunsen (the current dictator) jumped ship during pol pots cleanse and came back with Vietnamese and got installed as a savior dictator. Cambodia never had freedom of press or education since then and Thailand "stole our culture" has been thought in school curriculum ever since. It's hard to feel anything but pitty towards Cambodians as resisting this amount of authoritarian brain wash…

Partly true, but let's be clear about who is being indoctrinated about culture. Khmer culture is basically an offshoot of the original Hindu, and then Buddhist culture from India. The language is the 'latin' of the region and based off sanskrit, and all the temples in the region are modeled on Hindu temples (representations of mount Meru). Tai people came from SW China and colonized, if not assumed, this extant cultu…

Well said, I actually live on the border province Trat as an expat from Europe and Thai-Cambodian relationship in the real world is actually quite nice. We work and party together and share many aspects of cultural identity going way back as you correctly pointed out.

The bad blood is completely manufactured here and as someone who works in IT the power of information control has never been as apparent as it is today.

Re: DOJ seizes $15B in Bitcoin from 'pig butchering' scam based in Cambodia

#419
post #407
post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can just send it to a cold wallet, bury it and say oops lost ?

Bitcoin is designed to make it easy for everyone to know you did that. It’d be bad if you had to convince prosecutors that you really lost it and much, much worse if you had to convince your fellow mobsters.

You keep a little bit to give to them, so its not worth it for them to do any crime to you.

Like keep 1B available and store away the other 15, or even give them 10 and keep 5 like they when mobsters have 10 billion they have not much incentive to risk killing/torturing you for potentially 5 billion more.

Same for government, you have negotiaton playground.

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