Secret Service Freezes $52.8 Million Tied to Telegram-Based Scam Marketplace Xinbi Guarantee
The US Secret Service froze $52.8 million in cryptocurrency on September 8 tied to Xinbi Guarantee, a Chinese-language marketplace that ran openly on Telegram and sold scammers the tools they needed to defraud victims around the world. The funds, mostly USDT, were spread across 52 wallets, and investigators say two of them holding roughly $12 million were seized outright under a Justice Department warrant. The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control designated Xinbi a “significant transnational criminal organization” the same day, and the Justice Department’s Scam Center Strike Force says it has now seized $938 million total since the task force launched in November 2025.
Xinbi wasn’t a hacking operation in the traditional sense. It functioned more like an underground supply chain for fraud, with vetted merchants selling stolen personal data, money laundering services, and the technical infrastructure scammers need to run convincing operations. Blockchain analytics firm Elliptic, which supplied intelligence used in building the case, has tracked at least $24 billion in transactions flowing through Xinbi and its merchants since 2022 — making it the second-largest illicit online marketplace ever identified, behind only Huione Guarantee, which processed roughly $31 billion before Telegram shut it down in May 2025 after years of public exposure.
A large share of the money moving through platforms like Xinbi originates from pig-butchering scams, in which a stranger spends weeks or months building a fake romantic or personal relationship with a victim online before steering them toward a fraudulent investment platform and draining their savings. Xinbi’s merchants provided the connective tissue that let scattered scam operations across China and Southeast Asia function at scale — laundering proceeds, supplying burner accounts and phone numbers, and moving stolen funds through crypto rails fast enough to stay ahead of investigators.
Separately, on-chain investigators at Bitrace reported on September 9 that more than $45 million in USDT had been frozen across at least 22 addresses linked to Xinbi’s broader network, including wallets tied to its newer payment service — a distinct action from the Secret Service’s $52.8 million freeze but part of the same widening pressure campaign against the platform following its UK sanctioning earlier this year.
The action fits a pattern regulators have leaned on increasingly over the past two years: rather than trying to shut down decentralized scam networks piece by piece, target the stablecoin rails and centralized off-ramps those networks depend on to convert crypto into usable funds. Tether’s ability to freeze USDT at addresses flagged by law enforcement has become a recurring tool in these takedowns, and Wednesday’s coordinated action between the Secret Service, OFAC, and blockchain analytics firms suggests that playbook is only getting more coordinated, not less.
Cryptocurrency scams cause billions in losses annually; always verify investment platforms independently and never send funds based on relationships formed exclusively online. This article is not financial advice. For a guide to spotting common crypto scam tactics, see Coin680’s Bitcoin Academy.