Scam Center Strike Force restrains $52M in laundered crypto in one day

The DOJ’s Scam Center Strike Force had a busy Tuesday. On September 9, 2026, the task force restrained approximately $52 million in laundered crypto assets in a single day, targeting a platform called Xinbi Guarantee, a Chinese-language marketplace on Telegram that functioned essentially as a one-stop shop for fraud infrastructure. What actually happened The same day the funds were frozen, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned Xinbi Guarantee along with two affiliated entities, Anwen and SafeW Technology, designating all three as significant transnational criminal organizations. Tether, the issuer of the world’s most widely used stablecoin, cooperated with investigators to identify and lock down the relevant wallets. Simultaneously, a two-week operation in Madagascar dismantled 13 Chinese-run scam compounds, resulting in roughly 400 to 500 arrests. The compounds rely on forced labor, people trafficked under false promises of legitimate jobs who are then coerced into running fraud scripts. The scam type most associated with these operations is called pig butchering, where fraudsters cultivate romantic or investment relationships over weeks or months b...