Treasury sanctions Xinbi Guarantee for facilitating billions in cybercrime

The US Treasury just put a target on one of the largest illicit marketplaces most people have never heard of. On September 9, the Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned Xinbi Guarantee, a Telegram-based operation that functioned as a kind of dark Amazon for cybercriminals, facilitating money laundering, fraud, and scams aimed squarely at Americans. OFAC designated Xinbi as a “significant transnational criminal organization” under Executive Order 13581, a classification that puts it in the same regulatory penalty box as drug cartels and arms traffickers. Two affiliated companies, Singapore-based SafeW Technology Co., Ltd. and Cambodia-based Anwen Technology Co., Ltd., were sanctioned alongside it for providing material support through the XinbiPay/NewPay wallet service. The scale of the operation Xinbi Guarantee wasn’t a small-time hustle. Blockchain analytics firms estimate the platform processed somewhere between $19.7 billion and $24.2 billion in transaction volume since it launched around 2022. The marketplace operated primarily through Telegram channels, functioning as a peer-to-peer escrow service. Buyers and sellers of stolen data, scam toolkits, and money laundering ser...