Feds Target Telegram Scam Marketplace With 650,000 Users Linked to Fraud and Trafficking

WASHINGTON D.C — U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro announced Wednesday a major federal enforcement action against an illicit Chinese-language marketplace operating on Telegram that authorities say had more than 650,000 users and supported large-scale fraud, money laundering and human trafficking.

Officials said the platform was used to build fake investment websites, launder stolen funds and recruit trafficking victims to work inside scam compounds in Southeast Asia. The announcement came from the Scam Center Strike Force, which Pirro launched in 2025 to target Chinese-linked organized crime groups running industrial-scale “pig butchering” and cryptocurrency investment fraud operations against Americans.

Authorities identified the marketplace as Xinbi Guarantee, a Telegram-based service that sold customized scam websites, cryptocurrency laundering services and recruitment tools to operators of overseas fraud compounds. Court-authorized action included sealing the group’s Telegram channel and freezing more than $52 million in cryptocurrency, including two wallets holding about $12 million and 47 additional linked wallets. The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control simultaneously designated Xinbi a significant transnational criminal organization and imposed sanctions.

The strike force said the cumulative value of cryptocurrency it has restrained in related cases now stands at roughly $938 million. Officials also reported coordinated work in Madagascar, where teams helped local authorities dismantle 13 scam centers, process more than 3,200 electronic devices, make nearly 400 arrests and deport about 30 alleged Chinese ringleaders.

Cryptocurrency investment scams remain one of the fastest-growing forms of fraud targeting U.S. victims. The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center reported that Americans lost $8.65 billion to such schemes in 2025, an 89% increase from 2023. Many operations rely on trafficked workers held in compounds in Myanmar, Cambodia and neighboring countries who are forced to run romance and investment cons against people in the United States.

Pirro has repeatedly described the networks as Chinese transnational organized crime groups that exploit U.S. internet platforms, social media and financial infrastructure. Previous strike force actions included charges against compound managers, seizures of hundreds of fake investment websites and the first federal seizure of a Telegram recruitment channel used to lure workers into Cambodian compounds.

Telegram has faced repeated criticism for hosting Chinese-language “guarantee” marketplaces that function as escrow services for scammers, money launderers and compound operators. Earlier research by blockchain analytics firms estimated that Xinbi and related platforms processed billions of dollars in USDT and other cryptocurrency. Officials said Wednesday’s action was intended to disrupt the infrastructure that supplies those operations rather than only individual scam sites.

The Justice Department urged anyone who believes they have been victimized by cryptocurrency investment or romance scams to file a report at ic3.gov.