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The Trump administration sanctioned Chinese-language marketplace Xinbi Guarantee on Wednesday, along with two affiliated organisations, as part of a wider crackdown on transnational cybercrime.
The US Department of Justice also announced it had seized Telegram channels and cryptocurrency wallets tied to the platform, which has over 650,000 users, freezing more than US$52 million in potentially laundered funds in just one day.
“This is not a distant overseas crime story,” said Jeanine Pirro, the US attorney for the District of Columbia, at a press conference. “It is an industrial extraction of American savings run by Chinese transnational criminal enterprises and platforms.”
Wednesday’s operations were conducted by the US Department of Justice’s inter-agency Scam Centre Strike Force, alongside the Department of the Treasury.
Xinbi Guarantee, which runs on the encrypted messaging app Telegram, is accused of enabling scam centres to buy and sell illicit services that target Americans, acting as a central node connecting syndicates with merchants.
Singapore-based SafeW Technology Co and Cambodia-based Anwen Technology Co were also hit by the sanctions over allegations that they provided applications supporting Xinbi’s operations.
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