The federal government has seized a Chinese-run online scammers’ marketplace, blocked more than $50 million in laundered cryptocurrency, slapped sanctions on the operators and sent a strike force to Madagascar to help close 13 scam compounds.
Authorities said Xinbi Guarantee was a channel on Telegram, a social media messaging app, where people offered scamming websites, deepfake tools, databases of identities, and money laundering services.
Xinbi’s customers included North Korean hackers, organized crime groups and a Cambodia-based casino. American citizens were among the victims, U.S. officials said.
The U.S. government has now seized the marketplace channel, as well as cryptocurrency wallets that Xinbi maintained to facilitate payments between those who built the scam tools and the customers who were purchasing them.
“If Chinese organized crime can buy a custom website and a money laundering service the way you order takeout, then every American with a retirement account is in the blast radius,” said Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.
She announced the seizure of the platform on Wednesday.
The Treasury Department on Wednesday also said it sanctioned Xinbi and two related entities, Anwen and SafeW Technology, that helped keep it afloat. Those firms provided encryption and digital wallet services to Xinbi.
“Since its inception around 2022, Xinbi Guarantee’s marketplace has processed the equivalent of over $24 billion in digital assets and fiat currency through its marketplace and via its platforms, primarily facilitating transactions in countries located in Southeast Asia,” the Treasury Department said in a statement announcing the new sanctions.
According to U.S. officials, Xinbi served as the go-between for the end-user scammers and those producing the tools they needed.
That included collecting payments from the end users and holding them until the tool-makers delivered on the contracts. Xinbi also offered dispute resolution when there were disagreements between the two sides.
The Justice Department published examples of vendors’ ads from the Telegram channel. One showed an offer to launder cryptocurrency. Another was a recruitment ad seeking “Level 1 agents for fake order schemes.”
That ad offered sales scripts, “live models or AI-generated videos” used to entice scam targets, and advice on gold exchange scams.
The Madagascar operation was separate from Xinbi, but Ms. Pirro said it was more proof that the U.S. would reach anywhere in the world to take down online scams.
The American strike force assisted authorities in the island country off the African coast in making nearly 400 arrests at 13 scam centers.
At least 30 of those arrested were Chinese leaders of the operations, the Justice Department said.
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