Tokyo police arrested Hu Xiaowei, a 44-year-old Cypriot national of Chinese descent, on June 22 for allegedly submitting false residency documents in Tokyo's Chuo Ward. The charge relates to a fraudulent move-in notification filed to support a permanent residency application. Two associates were also detained on the same charges.
Hu is a senior figure tied to the Prince Group, an organization accused of running one of the largest crypto fraud operations in history. In October 2025, US authorities seized approximately 127,271 Bitcoin, valued at around $15 billion at the time, in connection with the group's activities. That seizure ranks among the largest financial forfeitures ever executed by the Department of Justice.
A residency filing hides a much bigger story
Hu, who also goes by aliases including Chen Xiao'er and Wu An Ming, has been sanctioned by both the US and UK governments for his ties to the Prince Group. UK authorities alone have frozen assets worth over $44 million connected to his name. Properties and entities linked to him span multiple jurisdictions.
The Prince Group, led by chairman Chen Zhi, stands accused of operating transnational fraud at an industrial scale. The organization allegedly ran forced-labor scam compounds in Cambodia, where victims were trafficked and coerced into executing so-called "pig butchering" schemes against investors worldwide. Pig butchering is a long-con investment fraud where scammers build trust over weeks or months before luring victims into fraudulent crypto investment platforms.
The pig butchering empire's global reach
Chen Zhi was indicted by US authorities in October 2025 and subsequently extradited to China in January 2026, where he currently faces legal proceedings. The forced-labor dimension adds another layer of severity, drawing attention from law enforcement agencies and human rights organizations globally.
For retail investors, pig butchering scams have become the dominant form of crypto fraud globally, surpassing ransomware and exchange hacks in total dollar losses. The international coordination on display here—with the US, UK, China, and Japan all acting against the same network—signals a shift in enforcement. Hu was sanctioned in the US and UK, had assets frozen in Britain, and got arrested in Japan.