Bloomberg: Lawyer Craig Wright Asks U.S. to Return His Seized 127,000 Bitcoins, Saying the Funds Couldn't Be Tied to Fraud or Money Laundering

BlockBeats News, March 11th, according to Bloomberg, this week, Zhizhi Chen's lawyers filed a motion in a New York federal court to overturn the U.S. government's seizure of a batch of bitcoin related to Zhizhi Chen. The lawyers argued that many of the charges against Zhizhi Chen were "obviously and patently false," and that the charges of his management of a fraud scheme were merely "vague descriptions and contextual comments regarding the situation in Cambodia." They questioned the timeline of the seizure of these cryptocurrencies and stated that these bitcoins could not have been obtained through fraud or money laundering.

The FBI found that one of Zhizhi Chen's key aides boasted that the Prince Group made over $30 million per day in 2018 from a Ponzi scheme and related illicit activities. Some of the funds were used to finance a cryptocurrency mining operation, producing bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies that could be easily transferred across borders.

Previously, U.S. federal prosecutors accused Zhizhi Chen of money laundering and telecommunications fraud and in October 2025 revealed that the U.S. had seized 127,271 bitcoins he once controlled, a record seizure worth $15 billion at the time.

According to sources familiar with the matter, shortly after the sanctions were imposed, key members of Zhizhi Chen's Singaporean company moved to Phnom Penh and settled in luxury residences in the city. Zhizhi Chen took a tough stance, hiring top U.S. lawyers to try to recover his cryptocurrency and challenge the U.S. seizure. The Prince Group called this based on "baseless accusations." The struggle still has financial support as several companies controlled by him or his associates have not been sanctioned.