Britain has frozen a London penthouse worth £9 million ($12 million) linked to Thet Li, the man accused of running the finances of the Prince Group.
That is the same alleged scam empire tied to $15 billion in Bitcoin that the US has moved to seize.
Who is Thet Li, and what did the UK freeze
Thet Li, also identified as Li Tian, is described as the Prince Group’s finance chief. Authorities allege he managed the flow of illicit funds through the conglomerate.
He holds Chinese, Cambodian, and Vanuatu citizenship as of 2026.
The £9 million penthouse freeze in March 2026 falls under the UK’s sanctions push against the Prince Group. In practical terms, Li cannot sell, rent, or otherwise profit from the property while the freeze stands.
Li was not a new name to sanctions authorities. The US sanctioned him in October 2025, alongside Prince Group founder Chen Zhi.
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That same US action labeled the Prince Group a transnational criminal organization.
On October 12, 2026, UK authorities also froze a London mansion valued at approximately 170 million yuan (around $24 million) and luxury watches linked to Li.
The Bitcoin at the center of it all
The US Department of Justice moved to seize about 127,271 Bitcoin allegedly tied to the group’s activities, valued at approximately $15 billion. It is described as the largest Bitcoin forfeiture in US history.
Chen Zhi was indicted on wire fraud and money laundering charges. Prosecutors allege the Bitcoin represents proceeds from his scam operations.
The Prince Group is accused of running large cyber fraud schemes out of Cambodia. Those operations allegedly relied on forced labor to target victims around the world.
The tactics include so-called “pig butchering” and romance scams. Pig butchering is grimly named: scammers spend weeks or months building trust with a victim, often through fake relationships or investment chats, before steering them into fraudulent crypto platforms and draining their savings.
A multi-country squeeze
The UK action is one piece of a wider international crackdown. Hong Kong joined in May 2026.
A court there imposed restrictions freezing roughly HK$8.9 billion in assets connected to Chen and Li.
Taken together, the US went after the Bitcoin and imposed sanctions, Hong Kong froze assets, and the UK targeted property, including the March 2026 penthouse freeze and the October 12, 2026 mansion freeze.
What this means for crypto and illicit finance
The size of the seizure shows that Bitcoin is far from untraceable. Its public ledger lets investigators track funds over time, sometimes years after the fact.
There is also the matter of what happens to the seized Bitcoin itself. A holding of 127,271 coins is large enough that any decision on its fate, whether retained, returned to victims, or otherwise handled, would be watched closely by the market.
Victims are a key stakeholder here. Asset freezes in the UK and Hong Kong could matter if recovery efforts eventually seek to compensate people who lost money to the alleged scams.
Disclosure: This article was edited by John Chen. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.