The China National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center (CVERC), Beijing’s primary cybersecurity agency, has accused Washington of stealing 127,272 Bitcoin — worth more than $13 billion USD at today’s exchange rate — in a December 2020 hack. According to Nikkei Asia, the CVERC outlined the details of the cyberattack on its WeChat account, saying that the stolen amount from five years ago came from LuBian, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency miners, and matches the amount the U.S. DOJ says it seized from Zhi.
Chen Zhi and his company, Prince Group, were accused of running scam call centers across Cambodia. Aside from the cases that he’s facing in the U.S., other countries and territories, like Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, have acted against the company, freezing more than $500 million in assets across borders and leading to the arrest of at least 25 people.
Although the hack happened in 2020, the stolen crypto remained dormant for over four years. Then, in 2024, the U.S. allegedly moved the funds after Zhi’s indictment. There is currently no clear link between Zhi and LuBian, although Washington contends that Chen Zhi owned the wallet that contained the Bitcoin. On the other hand, Beijing’s report says, “This is clearly not the behavior of a typical hacker eager to cash out for profits, and more like a precise operation orchestrated by a national hacking organization.”
This seizure is the largest of its kind in history, even eclipsing the $6.7 billion amount the U.K. confiscated from the “Bitcoin Queen”, who used the cryptocurrency to launder proceeds from over a hundred thousand victims in China. LuBian has no public ownership records, even though it was once one of the largest Bitcoin miners on Earth, reportedly controlling around 6% of the global hashrate, as reported by Blockscope Research. The operation seemingly disappeared overnight in 2021, though, and many analysts now link this to the 2020 hack.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping have recently agreed to a truce to the trade war between the two powers that has been intensifying over the past months. Because of this, it’s unclear why China released the statement, especially given that it’s not directly involved in the cases. Although LuBian reportedly used to have a presence in Iran and China, Beijing has put a blanket ban on crypto trading and mining within the country in 2021. Aside from that, even though Zhi was born Chinese, he’s now based in Cambodia and reportedly has citizenship in the country (although his exact whereabouts are unknown), and his company is registered in Phnom Penh.
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