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.
“Xinbi’s platform is used by scam centre operators to purchase goods and facilitate transactions in support of cyberscam and cybercrime operations, including various types of financial fraud,” said the US Department of the Treasury in a press release.
“Since its inception around 2022, Xinbi Guarantee’s marketplace has processed the equivalent of over US$24 billion in digital assets and fiat currency through its marketplace and via its platforms, primarily facilitating transactions in countries located in Southeast Asia.”
The government also announced it had deployed teams to Madagascar to assist in taking down 13 scam compounds, which it said were Chinese-run.
The Chinese embassy in Washington said its government requires Chinese citizens overseas to abide by local laws and regulations and refrain from criminal activity.
“The Chinese government has always taken a zero-tolerance approach to telecom fraud,” added embassy spokesman Liu Chang. “China looks forward to joining hands with all parties to jointly combat these crimes.”
While many scam compounds are located in Southeast Asian countries, including Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar, investigators and US officials have linked myriad operations to Chinese transnational crime groups.
Wednesday’s move is part of a push by the second Trump administration on the issue. US President Donald Trump signed an executive order in March seeking to combat cybercrime, fraud and predatory schemes against American citizens.
The government also formed the Counter-Scams Contact Group with 12 other countries, aiming to coordinate enforcement, seizures and information sharing. China is not a member. The United Kingdom, which is part of the group, imposed sanctions against Xinbi in March.
Beijing has also conducted its own crackdown on online fraud, collaborating with Southeast Asian governments and police to raid compounds and repatriate scam workers to China.
Southeast Asia’s cyberscam industry has grown rapidly in recent years, with syndicates initially targeting Chinese speakers before expanding globally.
Analysts said that criminal syndicates increasingly turned from targeting Chinese nationals to targeting Americans after Beijing’s 2023 crackdown in the region.
The sanctions come after a number of US government reports examining the financial damage to Americans from Southeast Asia scams linked to Chinese criminal organisations.
In a March report, the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission said Americans lost at least US$10 billion to Southeast Asia-based scams in 2024, with 2025 figures projected to be higher.
Chinese criminal organisations are moving quickly to stay ahead of crackdowns by embracing advanced tech and exploiting crypto, according to the commission.
The House Select Committee on China also released an investigation in May that found that the scam centres concentrated in Southeast Asia, particularly in Cambodia and Myanmar, were part of a criminal ecosystem linking cyber fraud, human trafficking and money laundering.
“Rather than direct state control or any state-backed conspiracy, the report concludes that Chinese governance and enforcement patterns have enabled the growth of these criminal networks,” the Select Committee said.
While America has strong enforcement mechanisms such as the strike force, it has also reduced funding for local civil society and investigative journalism, which are often vital for gathering on-the-ground evidence, said Jacob Sims, a visiting fellow at Harvard’s Asia Centre at an Asia Society Policy Institute event in July.
After Trump returned to office in 2025, his administration effectively dismantled the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), formerly the world’s largest aid agency, including terminating nearly all USAID counter-trafficking projects. This was a huge blow since in Asia alone, USAID had obligated about US$164 million to such projects from 2001 to 2020. -- SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
