DOJ Restrains $52 Million in Crypto Tied to Chinese Scam Marketplace Xinbi

US authorities have restrained roughly $52 million in scam-linked crypto in a single day and seized the Telegram channels of Xinbi Guarantee, a Chinese-language illicit marketplace.

Elliptic says its multi-year tracking of Xinbi’s wallets enabled the Secret Service to act. Treasury sanctions landed the same day.

Inside the $24 Billion Xinbi Guarantee Economy

Xinbi is a Chinese-language marketplace that runs on Telegram and sells services to scam center operators. Vendors advertise custom fraud websites, money laundering, and recruitment for compounds in Southeast Asia.

Elliptic exposed the operation in May 2025. The firm now counts at least $24 billion in transactions since 2022, second only to Huione Guarantee, which handled $31 billion before shutting down in 2025.

A linked payments arm, Xinbi Pay, has processed another $6 billion. Most of that flowed in Tether (USDT) on the TRON blockchain. The United Kingdom sanctioned Xinbi in March 2026.

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Xinbi Turns to USDD After the Freeze

Prosecutors seized two Xinbi payment wallets containing about $12 million and moved against 47 more, according to the Justice Department, which credited Tether for its help.

“After scamming money from hardworking Americans, criminals operating overseas laundered it through the Xinbi Guarantee network, which operated under the false assumption that they were out of the reach of U.S. law enforcement,” Tara McLeese, Special Agent of the US Secret Service, said.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control designated Xinbi a significant transnational criminal organization on the same day. It separately designated two entities that supported the marketplace.

Prosecutors also announced a Madagascar deployment, where authorities dismantled 13 Chinese-run compounds and arrested nearly 400 people. Strike Force agents spent two weeks assisting and processing more than 3,200 devices.

Xinbi condemned what it called arbitrary freezing and promised to compensate customers. It then swapped roughly $2.8 million of leftover USDT into Decentralized USD (USDD), a stablecoin with no issuer freeze function.

That escape route has limits, since Elliptic notes USDD is partly backed by freezable USDT. Guarantee marketplaces run on trust, and merchants now know their deposits can vanish without warning.

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