US Sanctions Chinese-Language Scam Marketplace
The United States on Wednesday sanctioned the Chinese-language marketplace Xinbi Guarantee and restrained more than $52 million in cryptocurrency, taking the Justice Department’s Scam Center Strike Force total to $938 million.
The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control designated Xinbi a significant transnational criminal organization and also listed two companies that support it: Anwen Technology Co., Ltd. of Cambodia, which develops the XinbiPay or NewPay wallet, and SafeW Technology Co., Ltd. of Singapore, which makes an encrypted messaging app used by the network.
Treasury said Xinbi has operated since about 2022 mainly on Telegram as an escrow marketplace linking scam-centre operators with sellers of fraudulent investment websites, laundering services and other tools. It said the platform handled the equivalent of more than $24 billion in digital assets and fiat, much of it tied to Southeast Asian compounds, and that North Korean-linked actors and previously designated groups, including elements of the Prince Group, had used it.
U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Ferris Pirro, who set up the Strike Force in November 2025, said a federal court in Washington authorised seizure of Xinbi’s Telegram channels on 7 September. Working with Tether, investigators seized two wallets used for vendor payments holding about $12 million and restrained dozens of other wallets. The day’s total passed $52 million.
“This is not a distant overseas crime story,” Pirro said. “It is an industrial extraction of American savings run by Chinese transnational criminal enterprises and platforms.” She said that if organised crime can buy a custom website and a laundering service as easily as takeout, “every American with a retirement account is in the blast radius.”
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said scam centres in Southeast Asia steal billions from American victims each year and that Treasury would keep using its tools against the networks. The designations were made under Executive Order 13581, as amended, and a March 2026 order on cybercrime and predatory schemes.
The same announcement covered a two-week Strike Force deployment to Madagascar, where officials said they helped dismantle 13 Chinese-run scam compounds and where hundreds of people were arrested. Pirro said the force is widening its work to compounds beyond Southeast Asia, including sites in Africa and the Middle East that often rely on trafficked labour.
The United Kingdom sanctioned Xinbi in March 2026. Blockchain firms have separately put the platform’s throughput in the tens of billions, with officials telling the public to treat unsolicited investment pitches with caution.
