The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), in coordination with UK authorities, took unprecedented action against cryptocurrency-enabled scam networks operating in Southeast Asia. The sanctions designation includes the Prince Group as a Transnational Criminal Organization (TCO) as well as an update to FinCEN’s Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) against Huione Group, effectuating the Final Rule as of 15 October, 2025.
OFAC’s action targets Chen Zhi and the Prince Group, which operated extensive “pig butchering” scam operations and cryptocurrency mining facilities. Four bitcoin addresses controlled by Chen Zhi were included in today’s designation, which collectively received over $1.7 billion in bitcoin over the past two and a half years. These addresses are now labeled in Chainalysis products as “OFAC SDN Chen Zhi 2025-10-14.” Additionally, as result of the FinCEN Final Rule against Huione Group, all affiliated Huione entities will be named in Chainalysis products in the Special Measures category with the prefix of “FinCEN 311 Huione Group“. Lastly, the U.K.’s Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI) sanctioned Byex Exchange, which is now labeled in the Sanctioned Entity category within Chainalysis products as “OFSI Byex Exchange Company Limited (aka BYEX.com) 2025-10-14.“
Sending and receiving exposure to these addresses will trigger sanctions and special measures alerts for KYT customers, per their configured alert rules.
For more information on these actions, visit here.
