Federal authorities took action Wednesday against Xinbi Guarantee, a Chinese-language online marketplace the U.S. government says has moved more than $24 billion in illicit funds since it began operating around 2022.
The Treasury Department’s sanctions office designated the platform along with two companies it accuses of enabling the operation — a Singapore-based firm and a Cambodia-based one — which officials say built the encrypted messaging tools and digital wallet systems the network relied on to coordinate deals and shift money. According to Treasury, the platform worked as a kind of trust broker for criminals: it held payments in escrow and released funds only once both sides of an illegal transaction were satisfied, letting fraud and laundering operations trade with each other without having to trust one another directly.
A blockchain analysis firm that helped trace the network’s activity put its total transaction volume at around $24.2 billion. Separately, the company behind the Tether stablecoin said it had frozen close to $39 million in USDT tokens connected to accounts linked to the group.
Jeanine Pirro, the top federal prosecutor for Washington, D.C., said the case illustrates how accessible sophisticated laundering tools have become for criminal organizations, warning that everyday Americans with savings and retirement accounts are ultimately exposed to that risk. British authorities sanctioned the same network earlier this year, and Wednesday’s move builds on that earlier action.
The sanctions are part of a wider U.S. effort against cybercrime networks tied to China, following an executive order President Trump signed in March directing agencies to prioritize fraud and scam operations targeting American citizens. Officials have pointed to industrial-scale scam operations, many based in Southeast Asia, as generating tens of billions of dollars a year, with much of that activity linked back to Chinese organized crime.
