DOJ Strike Force Seizes Scam Marketplace, Restrains $52M in Crypto

Treasury designated Xinbi a transnational criminal organization as prosecutors moved against its crypto holdings. The Justice Department’s Scam Center Strike Force, working with the Treasury Department, seized a Chinese-language scam marketplace called Xinbi Guarantee and restrained about $52 million in cryptocurrency in a single day, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro announced this week. That operation brought the total the Strike Force has restrained since its founding to roughly $938 million. A separate Strike Force team also spent the same stretch helping authorities in Madagascar take down 13 Chinese-run scam compounds, pushing the crackdown launched last November well beyond its original footprint in Southeast Asia. Inside the Xinbi Takedown Xinbi ran almost entirely on Telegram, in Chinese, functioning as a kind of marketplace where vendors advertised services to scam center operators: building custom fraud investment websites, “washing” money stolen through wire fraud, and recruiting trafficking victims to staff scam compounds. Xinbi itself held payments in escrow until a vendor finished the job, which is how prosecutors say they were able to trace specific victim funds to vendor...