Wired · United Kingdom · Wired
Telegram Is Still Hosting a Sanctioned $21 Billion Crypto Scammer Black Market
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For three and a half years, the messaging platform Telegram has served as the home of a sprawling black market known as Xinbi Guarantee, an anarchic, Chinese-language bazaar offering money laundering services to crypto scammers, products like electrified batons and tasers for those same scammers' human trafficking operations, and even at times other assorted criminal services ranging from harassment-for-hire to teen prostitution.
Key facts
- According to cryptocurrency tracing firm Elliptic, Xinbi Guarantee carried out $505 million in transactions in the 19 days after the British government's sanctions and added tens of thousands more
- On March 26, the UK's Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office officially sanctioned Xinbi for its alleged role in scamming and human trafficking
- Telegram didn't respond to WIRED's multiple requests for comment on its hosting of Xinbi Guarantee following the UK's sanctioning
- Xinbi is still going strong,” says Elliptic's cofounder and chief scientist Tom Robinson
Summary
The full extent of Telegram's failure to eradicate the scam marketplace was put to the test late last in March when the UK government officially sanctioned Xinbi Guarantee and designated it a facilitator of human trafficking. According to cryptocurrency tracing firm Elliptic, Xinbi Guarantee carried out $505 million in transactions in the 19 days after the British government's sanctions and added tens of thousands more users to reach nearly half a million buyers and sellers in total.
Telegram didn't respond to WIRED's multiple requests for comment on its hosting of Xinbi Guarantee following the UK's sanctioning.