The U.S. Treasury Department on Wednesday sanctioned Xinbi Guarantee, a Chinese-language platform it described as a transnational criminal organization. The Justice Department’s Scam Center Strike Force moved the same day to seize the marketplace’s infrastructure and digital-asset wallets.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC, also designated two companies that supplied tools to the platform. Treasury said Xinbi has processed more than $24 billion in digital assets and fiat currency since roughly 2022, adding that its users have reportedly included North Korean hackers and entities already under U.S. sanctions.
Treasury linked Xinbi’s rise to action against Huione Pay
Treasury was explicit about where Xinbi’s business came from. After the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, moved against Huione Pay, cybercriminals shifted to Xinbi’s marketplace, according to the department. Treasury said the platform continued to offer substantially similar services to an overlapping customer base.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in the announcement that scam centers in Southeast Asia steal billions of dollars from American victims each year.
Merchants and laundering networks moved to SafeW
Treasury said Xinbi had also been adapting to stay ahead of investigators. Around June 2025, as law enforcement scrutiny intensified, it began migrating its merchants and money-laundering networks onto SafeW, an encrypted messaging app, and launched a wallet called XinbiPay.
Wednesday’s sanctions also covered the developers tied to those tools: Singapore-based SafeW Technology and Cambodia’s Anwen Technology.
Wallet freezes came before the formal designation
The pressure began a day earlier. On Tuesday, 52 wallets holding $52.8 million in USDT were frozen, using intelligence that blockchain analytics firm Elliptic supplied to the Secret Service.
The Justice Department seized two of those wallets, holding about $12 million, under a warrant unsealed Wednesday. A district court had also authorized the seizure of the Telegram channels hosting the marketplace on Monday, and by Wednesday Xinbi’s main channel had disappeared.
Xinbi’s operators pushed back. According to Elliptic, administrators told users on Telegram that Xinbi “strongly condemns Tether’s arbitrary freezing of addresses” and said they were moving to USDD, a Tron-based stablecoin with no comparable freeze switch.
Earlier actions in the U.S. and U.K.
Treasury has been targeting this area for months. In April, it sanctioned a Cambodian senator over a pig-butchering network. Britain’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office designated Xinbi in March.