The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) has shut down Xinbi Guarantee, a Chinese-operated “guarantee marketplace” used by scam operations to offer illicit services to fraudsters. On September 9, 2026, the DoJ coordinated a sweeping action: seizing Telegram channels tied to Xinbi, freezing $52.8 million in cryptocurrency, and dismantling 13 overseas internet scam compounds run by Chinese organized crime for operations in Southeast Asia. The move was led by the U.S. Scam Center Strike Force with help from law enforcement worldwide.
What Xinbi Guarantee Did
Xinbi Guarantee operated as a middleman between vendors and scam center operators, particularly in romance and “pig butchering” schemes. It provided services like building fake investment sites, laundering funds from wire fraud, and recruiting workers—sometimes trafficking individuals—into scam compounds. The marketplace held customers’ money until promised tasks were completed, branding itself as a safer way to hire scam vendors.
The platform first gained prominence after its predecessors, HuiOne Guarantee and Tudou Guarantee, rolled off or shut down. Since its launch around 2022, Xinbi has facilitated estimated transaction volume of $30 billion, according to blockchain analytics firm Elliptic, which flagged Xinbi as a major node in the global crypto scam ecosystem. Most payments were made using the USDT stablecoin on the TRON blockchain.
U.S. Response & Freezing of Assets
The DoJ froze 52 cryptocurrency wallets connected to Xinbi and associated merchants, restraining $52.8 million. Two of those wallets alone held about $12 million in funds gathered from cybercriminal vendors. The move was part of wider actions that have now restrained nearly $938 million by the Scam Center Strike Force since its inception.
To dismantle the scheme’s infrastructure, authorities also took over Telegram channels and deactivated usernames tied to Xinbi. The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) imposed sanctions on Chinese-language media outlets that facilitate fraud and money laundering targeting U.S. victims.
Shift to Other Stablecoins and Implications
After the freeze, Xinbi pivoted away from USDT, which allows freezing via its centralized issuer, and exchanged about $2.8 million of its remaining holdings into USDD, a decentralized stablecoin. Although USDD claims to lack centralized control, its partial backing with freezable USDT complicates its decentralization claims and still exposes holders to risk.
In the effort to dismantle the operations on the ground, law enforcement in Madagascar shut down 13 scam compounds, seized more than 3,200 electronics, investigated nearly 400 suspects, and saw about 30 Chinese nationals in leadership roles repatriated under Chinese government authority. Further, dozens of arrests and device seizures were part of coordinated investigations prompted by the Xinbi disruption.
This crackdown follows earlier sanctions from the UK, which targeted Xinbi for offering crypto-based services to scam centers—including stolen data and satellite communication tools used in fraud operations against individuals. Both nations are pushing into the ecosystem of illicit crypto marketplaces and guarantee schemes that enable large-scale victimization.
The Xinbi platform has reportedly been leveraged by OFAC-sanctioned groups, including North Korean hackers, Jin Bei Group Co., Ltd., and other entities linked to the Prince Group trafficking and crime organization. These connections have increased regulatory pressure and intensified international law enforcement response.
Xinbi’s fall is seen by analysts as a critical blow to the “guarantee marketplace” model: its trust mechanism—holding funds until a service is delivered—depended on the assumption that those behind it would stay above reach of enforcement. With wallets identified and frozen, that assumption no longer holds.
The U.S. is expanding its Scam Center Strike Force globally to keep targeting illicit cryptocurrency fraud networks, not just the platforms but the physical locations helping to run them. More crackdowns could follow.
The Xinbi Guarantee takedown marks a major milestone in the fight against crypto-enabled fraud. By crippling the operational backbone of the guarantee marketplace model and freezing nearly $53 million in criminal assets, authorities have exposed vulnerabilities in how illicit markets operate. Going forward, the willingness and capability to follow digital money flows will be a key frontier in cybercrime enforcement — what’s vital now is whether similar entities can stay afloat amid increased regulation, blockchain scrutiny, and international collaboration.
