The US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned four people and 41 companies on Thursday 5 November 2026 for helping keep the business network of Cambodia’s Prince Group running, according to Treasury press release sb0683. It is the third round of Prince Group sanctions in just over a year. None of the new entries on the sanctions list carries a crypto address. The 127,271 bitcoin that the Justice Department moved to seize in October 2025, worth about $9.7 billion with BTC near $75,950 around 07:16 UTC on 7 November, are still tied up in a civil forfeiture case in Brooklyn. No final order has been issued, and no victim has been paid from them.
Treasury says the new targets “helped sustain” the group after the first two rounds, on 14 October 2025 and 23 June 2026. In its account, they managed offshore companies, hid who really owned them and served senior executives. Some, it says, helped those executives get around the earlier sanctions by moving property and company shares into other names. One example in the release is a mansion in Tokyo.
“Treasury remains committed to dismantling every layer of these organizations,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in the release.
The same action named one more person under a separate cyber-related order: Chui Kok Wa, a Malaysian national listed at an address in Antananarivo, Madagascar. Treasury says a network of scammers he led in Madagascar took more than $400,000, including digital assets, from Americans. He is the alleged leader in the Madagascar romance scam charges filed by US prosecutors in Washington in October; he has not been tried on them.
All of these are allegations. Sanctions are an administrative measure, not a court verdict. Prince Group has denied wrongdoing. Its founder Chen Zhi has not been convicted in the US or anywhere else, and the Justice Department’s own release on his indictment states that every defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty.
Prince Group sanctions, round three: who OFAC named on 5 November
The 45 designations fall under Executive Order 13581, as amended by Executive Order 13863, the US tool against transnational criminal organizations; Chui Kok Wa falls under Executive Order 13694 on malicious cyber activity. Treasury also cites Executive Order 14390 of 6 March 2026 on cybercrime and fraud against Americans. The FBI field offices in New York and Honolulu, the Justice Department’s Scam Center Strike Force and the US Attorney’s office for the District of Alaska worked on the case, and Treasury thanked the British Virgin Islands Financial Investigation Agency and the UK Foreign Office.
Qiu Yong and his assistant: 14 companies in Hong Kong and the BVI
The largest single block belongs to Qiu Yong, born in 1987, a Cambodian national who also holds Saint Lucia and Turkish passports. Treasury says he controls companies in the British Virgin Islands and Hong Kong on Prince Group’s behalf and worked for a company controlled by Chen Zhi. Fourteen companies were designated as his. Two are Hong Kong money lenders, Premium Financial Limited and Solar Scape Financial Limited, held through BVI shells. Three others carry wine-trade names (Glad Vast, Glad Sparkle and Glad Harvest), and four are BVI shelf companies with names such as Victory Flora and Win Applause.
His personal assistant, Zhao Mengyao, also known as Amy Zhao, was named too. Treasury describes her as company secretary or co-director of several of his firms and as his co-shareholder in Mighty Divine Trust Hong Kong, a company directed by Zhou Yun, the wealth manager of Chen Zhi whom OFAC designated in October 2025.
A Tokyo mansion moved to a wife
He Yujing is the wife of Chen Bo, a Prince Group executive sanctioned on 23 June 2026. According to Treasury, Chen Bo transferred ownership of his Tokyo mansion to her after October 2025, the month the first sanctions hit. She also owns a company called Super Light Speed Kh Technology Co., which is now blocked as well.
Visal Pang and Chen Bo: 22 Cambodian companies
Visal Pang, also known as Pang Weizhi, controls 11 Cambodian companies, several of them co-directed with Chen Bo, Treasury says. The list runs from construction and logistics (Cambodia First Unite Construction Group, First Unite International Logistics) to a duty-free merchandise firm, the Marco Polo Hotel company and two companies trading under the U-Life name. The UK had already sanctioned him on 26 March 2026.
Eleven more companies are controlled by Chen Bo himself. They include Asian Welfare Lotteries, CB General Insurance PLC, Prince International Airlines and Richeng Property Developer, alongside firms in energy, printing equipment, aquaculture and beauty.
The last four entities sit outside Cambodia. Three are tied to Dai An, designated in June: Chen Hua Holdings in Singapore, Meritwise Group in Mauritius and Greenmeadows Properties in Malaysia. The fourth, Greenbay Multi Media in Singapore, is wholly owned by Thet Li, sanctioned in October 2025.
| Group named on 5 Nov 2026 | People | Companies |
|---|---|---|
| Qiu Yong network (Hong Kong, BVI) | 2 (Qiu Yong, Zhao Mengyao) | 14 |
| He Yujing (wife of Chen Bo) | 1 | 1 |
| Visal Pang (Cambodia) | 1 | 11 |
| Chen Bo (designated June 2026) | 0 | 11 |
| Dai An (designated June 2026) | 0 | 3 |
| Thet Li (designated October 2025) | 0 | 1 |
| Total under the Prince Group order | 4 | 41 |
Source: Treasury release and OFAC sanctions list entries of 5 November 2026. Chui Kok Wa, designated under the cyber order, is counted separately.
No crypto addresses in the new entries
The new Prince Group entries on OFAC’s list of Specially Designated Nationals carry no digital currency address, and the Treasury release does not mention the seized bitcoin or any amount frozen. The Defiant made the same observation in its report on 6 November.
That is a change from the first round. On 14 October 2025, OFAC published four bitcoin addresses tied to Chen Zhi, holding about $1.8 billion according to blockchain analytics firm Elliptic, which linked a fifth address of about $560 million that was not sanctioned. Elliptic also reported that Jin Bei Group received more than $280 million, mostly in USDT, and that Byex Exchange, sanctioned by the UK, received at least $1.3 billion.
Addresses matter to exchanges and stablecoin issuers because they can screen deposits against them automatically. Without addresses, compliance teams have to work from names, passports and company registrations. OFAC’s 50% rule still applies: any company owned half or more by blocked persons is blocked too, even if it is not named. Our report on OFAC’s North Korea IT worker sanctions, which did list eight wallets, shows what an address-based action looks like.
Three rounds in thirteen months
| Date | Who acted | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| 14 Oct 2025 | OFAC, UK, FinCEN, DOJ | OFAC names 146 targets led by Chen Zhi; FinCEN finalises its rule against Huione Group; DOJ unseals Chen Zhi’s indictment and files to forfeit 127,271 BTC |
| Early Jan 2026 | Cambodia | Chen Zhi arrested and sent to China |
| 26 Mar 2026 | UK | Visal Pang designated |
| 23 Jun 2026 | OFAC | 35 more targets (9 people, 26 companies), including Chen Bo and Dai An |
| 25 Sep 2026 | US District Court, EDNY | Judge strikes or denies nine victim claims in the bitcoin case |
| 5 Nov 2026 | OFAC | 45 targets (4 people, 41 companies), plus Chui Kok Wa under the cyber order |
By our count, the three US rounds add up to 226 Prince Group designations: 146, then 35, then 45. The June round of nine people and 26 companies (figures reported by OCCRP and the trade outlet AGB; Treasury’s new release confirms the date) hit executives such as Chen Bo and Dai An. This one goes a level lower, to the nominees, assistants and relatives who held assets for them.
Where the 127,271 bitcoin forfeiture case stands
The bitcoin case has moved far less than the sanctions list. Court filings were not open to us; the details below come from the Justice Department’s announcement and from Elliptic, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and CryptoSlate, which followed the filings.
On 14 October 2025, the Justice Department unsealed an indictment in federal court in Brooklyn charging Chen Zhi with wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy, which carry up to 40 years in prison if he is convicted. The same day the US Attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York and the department’s National Security Division filed a civil complaint to forfeit about 127,271 BTC, then worth about $15 billion. The department called it the largest forfeiture action in its history and said the coins were already in US government custody. The case is United States v. Approximately 127,271 Bitcoin, number 1:25-cv-05745.
More than a year later there is no final forfeiture order, and nothing shows the coins moving into the US Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, according to CryptoSlate’s 1 October report and ICIJ. Chen Zhi’s lawyers filed a motion to dismiss on 10 March 2026, arguing the government has not tied the coins to any crime; prosecutors answered that he lacks standing. We found no ruling on it.
25 September: nine victims shut out
On 25 September 2026, Judge Rachel P. Kovner struck the two claims filed on time, by Ath Leepinyo and Connie Wilson, and denied seven late ones, CryptoSlate reported. The judge found that none of the nine had Article III standing, the threshold for contesting the case, because they could not plausibly trace their money into the seized wallets. The order did not decide the forfeiture itself.
Scam victims are not the only ones knocking. ICIJ reported that lawyers for thousands of alleged victims of Iranian terrorism, who argue the LuBian blockchain and earns a reward, which makes rewriting history very expensive.">mining operation had ties to Iran, are also claiming the coins. The Justice Department told one lawyer in February 2026 that victims would be contacted “if/when” appropriate, according to ICIJ.
If the government wins, victims can still ask for remission under federal rules (28 CFR 9.8). That route needs a specific, documented loss caused by the offense, and the decision is at the department’s discretion. Senator Cynthia Lummis has suggested part of the coins could go to the strategic reserve, ICIJ reported; the Justice Department has not confirmed any plan, and victim advocates want a fund instead. The pattern is familiar: our report on the White House scam crackdown and its $833 million restrained found none of it shown returned to victims.
Where the coins came from: the sources disagree
The origin of the bitcoin is disputed. ICIJ reported in March that the coins were reportedly stolen in 2020 from LuBian, a mining operation, sat untouched from late 2020 to mid-2024 and were then moved to new wallets. Chen’s lawyers use that timeline to argue the coins cannot hold proceeds of scams run in 2021 and 2022. A Chinese cybercrime agency has gone further and publicly accused the US of taking the bitcoin through a hack in 2020, ICIJ noted. Elliptic’s October 2025 analysis gives both versions without settling them: one passage ties the coins to mining in 2021 and 2022, largely dormant since 2023, another repeats the 2020 LuBian theft. The Justice Department, for its part, says the coins are fraud proceeds laundered partly through Prince Group’s mining businesses. None of these accounts has been tested in court.
| Date | Value of the 127,271 BTC | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 14 Oct 2025 (seizure filing) | about $15 billion | Justice Department release |
| March 2026 | about $9 billion | ICIJ |
| 7 Nov 2026, around 07:16 UTC | about $9.7 billion (BTC near $75,950) | Coindaro calculation, market snapshot |
Chen Zhi is in China, not in Brooklyn
Chen Zhi was arrested in Cambodia and sent to China in early January 2026. He remains under US indictment but is not in US custody. In late July, the South China Morning Post, citing Caixin, reported that Chinese prosecutors had approved his arrest on 6 July, dropped a count of concealing criminal proceeds and added copyright infringement and intentional injury. No trial date or verdict has been reported, and we could not read the Caixin original.
What the sanctions change for exchanges and scam victims
For US persons, including US exchanges and banks, any property of the 45 new targets is now blocked and dealings with them are banned, as are dealings with companies they own 50% or more. The UK has its own list, which already covers Visal Pang. We found no matching listing by the European Union, so EU platforms are not bound by these names in the same way, although many screen against the US list anyway.
For people who lost money to a romance or investment scam, the new sanctions do not open a claim. The only active route to the 127,271 BTC is the Brooklyn case, and the September order shows that a claim has to tie a loss to the seized wallets. Be wary of any service that promises to recover funds from the Prince Group case in exchange for an upfront fee. Our guide on how pig butchering scams work, step by step explains how these schemes start and where to report them.
What to watch next
The next marker in the bitcoin case is a ruling on the motion to dismiss filed in March, followed by any final forfeiture order and a decision on where the coins go: a remission process, the strategic reserve or both. In China, a trial date for Chen Zhi has not been set. On the sanctions side, Treasury has now moved three times in thirteen months, each round further down the chain of nominees and relatives. The 5 November list points at the people holding the paperwork, not the wallets.