A Telegram storefront that armed Southeast Asia’s scam industry is now offline. The Justice Department said Wednesday it seized the channels running Xinbi Guarantee, took two cryptocurrency wallets, and flew the Scam Center Strike Force to Madagascar, where it helped shut 13 compounds run by Chinese organized crime groups.
Roughly $52M in scam proceeds was restrained in a single day, bringing the Strike Force’s total to about $938M. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned Chinese-language media that it says facilitated the schemes.
Wallets holding $52.8M in Tether are frozen, according to Elliptic, the analytics firm that traced them alongside the Secret Service. The shop ranks the bazaar as the second largest illicit marketplace ever seen, with roughly $30B through it since 2022.
The bazaar rose as HuiOne Guarantee and its successor, Tudou Guarantee, fell away. Its role was matchmaking: hooking vendors up with the crews behind romance fraud, selling them ready-made investment sites, laundering their proceeds and sourcing trafficked workers for the compounds. Treasury says North Korean hackers and sanctioned outfits, the Prince Group among them, used it too.
