Chinese National Extradited Over $36 Million Crypto 'Pig Butchering' Scam

According to BleepingComputer, a Chinese national has been extradited from the Netherlands to California to face charges over a cryptocurrency investment scam that stole nearly $37 million from 174 victims in the United States. Zhen Zhao, 44, was arraigned after extradition and faces a charge of conspiracy to commit money laundering, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison if he is found guilty.

The case is part of a wider prosecution of what investigators call a pig butchering ring, where scammers build a relationship with a target over weeks through text messages, social media, phone calls, or dating apps, then steer them into a fake investment. Eight of Zhao's accomplices in the same ring have already pleaded guilty. Two of them have been sentenced, one to 51 months in prison and one to 46 months.

What the money trail shows

Prosecutors laid out how the money moved once a victim agreed to invest. Victims sent funds to accounts at Deltec Bank in the Bahamas, opened under the name Axis Digital Limited. From there, the co-conspirators arranged for the bank to convert the money into the stablecoin Tether and send it to a digital wallet controlled in Cambodia. Co-conspirators in Cambodia then moved the Tether on to the leaders of scam centers across the region.

That chain matters because it shows the scam depended on a single bank account acting as the entry point for tens of millions of dollars from 174 different victims before the money was broken apart and sent overseas. A fake trading website convinced each victim individually, but every one of those victims was funneled into the same account, which is the point where law enforcement could trace the fraud back from the Bahamas to Cambodia to the people running it.

Why this prosecution matters

The sentences already handed down, 51 months and 46 months for two accomplices, show that participating anywhere in this kind of ring, not just running it, carries real prison time. Extraditing Zhao from the Netherlands to face trial in California signals that distance and nationality do not shield someone accused of laundering money for a scam ring operating across the United States, Cambodia, and the Bahamas.

The scale of the problem behind this one case is large. The FBI's 2025 Internet Crime Report recorded over $8.6 billion in losses to investment scammers last year, from 72,984 complaints, up from $6.5 billion in 2024. A single extradition will not change that number. What it does is put one more person in the ring in a courtroom, with two co-conspirators already sentenced and six more who have pleaded guilty and are presumably awaiting sentencing. For the 174 people who lost money in this case, that is the first visible step toward accountability since the fraud took place.