The Treasury Department designated a Chinese-language online marketplace as a transnational criminal organization, part of a federal crackdown that has now restrained nearly $1 billion in cryptocurrency tied to scams targeting Americans.
U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro announced the enforcement actions Wednesday at a Washington press conference, describing Xinbi Guarantee as an industrial-scale fraud operation that sold fake investment websites, money laundering services, and other scam tools through the messaging platform Telegram. Her Scam Center Strike Force restrained $52 million in cryptocurrency from digital wallets across the Xinbi network, and a federal court in Washington authorized the seizure of the group's Telegram channels earlier in the week, Fox Business reported.
The Treasury's designation cuts Xinbi off from the American financial system. It bars U.S. persons from doing business with the organization and requires any blocked assets to be reported to the Office of Foreign Assets Control. Treasury accused Xinbi of ties to North Korean hackers and other criminal syndicates.
Pirro laid out how the marketplace worked. Vendors advertised scam services, custom-built fake brokerage websites, laundering pipelines, and criminal buyers shopped for what they needed. Xinbi acted as the middleman, holding funds in escrow until the vendor delivered.
Pirro put it bluntly at the press conference:
"It's where vendors market their services to scam us. Once the scammer purchases a service from the vendor, Xinbi holds the money for the vendor until the vendor's services are complete."
She added that the arrangement amounted to "a double protection to make sure that Americans are scammed properly and unwittingly." Xinbi, she said, "sells tools of industrial fraud, including custom-built fake investment websites designed to look like real brokerages."
The scale of the operation dwarfs what the $52 million seizure alone suggests. Since 2022, Xinbi Guarantee has processed more than $24 billion in digital assets through its platforms, Breitbart reported, citing the Treasury announcement. Sanctions were also imposed on two supporting entities, Anwen Technology Co., based in Cambodia, and Safe W Technology, based in Singapore.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent framed the problem in dollar terms: "Scam centers in Southeast Asia steal billions of dollars from American victims each year."
The $52 million restrained from Xinbi's wallets is part of a larger running total. The U.S. government has now restrained $938 million linked to cryptocurrency scam schemes of this kind, Pirro said, a figure that reflects years of enforcement across multiple operations, not just this single takedown.
Secret Service Special Agent Tara McLeese described one case that put a human face on the numbers. A Virginia resident lost $800,000 in a related scheme, money that moved through the Xinbi network before investigators traced it.
"Our team was able to follow the funds as they were laundered through the Xinbi Guarantee Network."
The scams typically begin with something as simple as a wrong-number text, a stray WhatsApp message, or a social media contact. The target gets drawn into what looks like a cryptocurrency investment opportunity. By the time the victim realizes the brokerage website is fake and the returns are fabricated, the money has already moved through layers of laundering infrastructure, the very infrastructure Xinbi sold as a product.
Pirro urged Americans to intervene if they know someone being drawn in:
"If you know someone that thinks they've got an opportunity that's too good to be true, or that they've been contacted by someone who's got the in on cryptocurrency, you've got to tell them to stop. Whether it started on a mistaken phone call or WhatsApp or any of the other social media websites. A text, a wrong number. Do not send a dollar. Do not send a penny."
The domestic enforcement ran alongside an international operation. Pirro's Scam Center Strike Force and the FBI traveled to Madagascar, where they assisted local authorities in shutting down 13 scam centers allegedly run by Chinese organized crime groups. Those raids produced 500 arrests and the repatriation of 30 Chinese leaders of the compounds back to China.
The scam compounds, concentrated primarily in Southeast Asia but clearly spreading to other regions, rely on trafficked workers in some cases. Pirro said Xinbi also recruited trafficking victims for scam compounds in Southeast Asia, adding a layer of human exploitation to the financial fraud.
Pirro acknowledged the limits of the victory. Asked whether Xinbi could simply relocate to another platform after losing its Telegram channels, she conceded it would be "very easy" for the group to stand up a new operation. But she framed the enforcement push as part of a longer campaign.
"Old crimes are being committed in new ways. They've got this figured out, and it took us a while to understand where it was coming from, who was doing it, how they were doing it. And now that we understand that we will keep pace, and we will beat them."
Pirro said President Trump has been briefed on cryptocurrency scam operations targeting Americans. The comment signals that the administration views the issue as a national-security-level concern, not just a consumer-protection matter, a distinction that matters when the alleged perpetrators include state-linked hackers from North Korea and organized crime networks operating across multiple continents.
The Justice Department's Scam Center Strike Force seized infrastructure and digital asset wallets used by Xinbi Guarantee as part of the broader action. Combined with the Treasury designation and the Telegram channel seizures, the federal government deployed financial, criminal, and platform-level tools simultaneously, a coordinated approach that reflects how deeply embedded these operations have become in the global digital economy.
Whether the crackdown holds depends on what comes next. Pirro herself admitted the criminals can rebuild quickly. A $24 billion operation does not evaporate because its Telegram channels go dark. But the alternative, letting a Chinese-language fraud marketplace openly sell fake brokerages and laundering services while Americans lose their savings, was never an option that any serious government could tolerate.
When the people running the scam can move faster than the people enforcing the law, the only answer is to keep closing the distance, and to make sure the consequences, when they land, are severe enough to matter.