"Hell Money" is the nineteenth episode of the third season of the science fiction television series The X-Files and 68th episode overall. It premiered on the Fox network in the United States on March 29, 1996. It was written by Jeffrey Vlaming and directed by Tucker Gates, a and featured guest appearances by BD Wong, Lucy Liu, Michael Yama, and James Hong. The episode is a "Monster-of-the-Week" story, unconnected to the series' wider mythology. "Hell Money" earned a Nielsen household rating of 9.9, being watched by 14.86 million people in its initial broadcast. The episode received mostly mixed to positive reviews from television critics.

The show centers on FBI special agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson), who work on cases linked to the paranormal, called X-Files. In this episode, Mulder and Scully investigate a murder in San Francisco's Chinatown involving masked intruders, strange Chinese symbols, a lottery, and the clandestine selling of body parts.

The premise of the episode was based on three major ideas: a pyramid scheme involving body parts, a lottery in a small town, and corporate beings assembling the destitute in Chinatown. The episode's writer, Vlaming, developed the latter two ideas and series creator Chris Carter merged all three ideas in the finalized script. The episode contained several elaborate special effects shots, most notably the scene wherein a frog bursts out of a victim's chest, which was created by using molds to create a fake human torso that was then placed over an actor.

In San Francisco's Chinatown, a Chinese immigrant, Johnny Lo, makes his way to an apartment building, where he finds the Hanzi characters for hongza (凶宅) freshly written in white paint. Touching the paint, Lo appears confused and looks around behind him, but still enters. Inside, he is confronted by someone with a flashlight telling him to "pay the price" in Cantonese. Lo states, in Cantonese, that he wanted out, before attacking the man with a switchblade. After stabbing the man, he turns around to find three figures wearing shigong masks. Later, a security guard at Bayside Funeral Home finds the three figures near a crematory oven. The three disappear into the darkness, and the guard peers into the crematory oven to see Lo being burned alive.

Fox Mulder and Dana Scully are called in to investigate Lo's death, which Mulder explains is the latest in a series of fatal incinerations of recent Chinese immigrants in Chinatowns in San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles, and Boston. The detective suggests it may be related to increased gang activity due to an influx of immigrants from Hong Kong before 1997, but can't tie the evidence to anyone. Scully notices Lo had a glass eye while examining the body. When they find a Chinese character written inside the oven, the agents collaborate with Glen Chao (BD Wong), a Chinese-American detective with the SFPD. Chao translates it as gui meaning "ghost." Mulder also finds a scrap of burned paper in the ashes, which Chao identifies as "hell money", a symbolic offering to deceased spirits for good luck, and mentions the Festival of the Hungry Ghosts. Chao claims there aren't a lot of places in Chinatown that sells hell money, so the agents use this information to locate Lo's apartment. Outside, the agents discuss their theories; Mulder believes that ghost activity is behind the deaths, while Scully suspects a cult. At the front door, the agents and Chao notice the hongza symbol on the door, but Chao claims not to recognize it. Inside the apartment, they find the kitchen had been cleaned out, and a new carpet in another room. They then find Lo's collection of herbal medicine and charms, as well as bloodstains underneath the recently installed carpet.

Meanwhile, another immigrant, Hsin Shuyang, tends to his leukemia-stricken daughter, Kim (Lucy Liu). To pay for her treatments, Hsin attends an underground lottery in which participants either win money or lose an organ, depending on tiles chosen from a pair of jade vases. Another man, Li Oi-Huan, wins the lottery but selects a red-edged tile. They announce his title, and the crowd acts with pity, and he is escorted away.

The agents and Chao are in a herbalist shop, looking at displays of exotic ingredients for traditional Chinese medicine. Chao asks the clerk about the medicine found in Lo's apartment, and she says they were used as a painkiller. The clerk also says she knew Johnny Lo, and explains the significance of the symbols on the front door of Lo's apartment, however Chao translates it as "haunted house", which piques Mulders interest. Chao explains the Festival of the Hungry Ghosts as a voiceover as the scene switches to Li Oi-Huan sitting alone, drinking from a bowl. After drinking, Li sees several ghosts; which Chao's voiceover explains are the type most feared by the Chinese. Li watches as one of the ghosts removes Li's heart. After he slumps over dead, we see the Hard Faced Man (James Hong) in surgical scrubs, examining him.

That night, the three Shi Gong masked figures are discovered around an empty grave in Highland Park Cemetery by a night patrolman, but they disappear again into the darkness. The agents are called in, and Mulder realizes the grave is too shallow, and finds the body of Li under the dirt. Back at the Central Precinct, Scully performs an autopsy and finds that he had been selling body parts, noticing his numerous surgical scars and glass eye, to which she connects to Johnny Lo's glass eye. While examining, Scully remarks on the price of the human body, before finding a live frog escaping the chest cavity.