Get the latest tech news
An $8.4 Billion Chinese Hub for Crypto Crime Is Incorporated in Colorado
Before a crackdown by Telegram, Xinbi Guarantee grew into one of the internet’s biggest markets for Chinese-speaking crypto scammers and money laundering. And all registered to a US address.
In some cases, Robinson explains, these Xinbi Guarantee vendors offer bank accounts in the same country as the victim so that they can receive whatever payment they're tricked into making, then pay the scammer in the cryptocurrency Tether. Elliptic found through blockchain analysis, for instance, that about $220,000 stolen from the Indian cryptocurrency exchange WazirX—the victim of a$235 million theft in July of last year, widely attributed to North Korean hackers—had flowed into Xinbi Guarantee in a series of transactions last November. When WIRED wrote to Tether to ask about its role in those black markets, the company responded in a statement that it encourages “firms like Elliptic and other blockchain intelligence providers to share critical data with law enforcement so we can act swiftly and in coordination.”
Or read this on Wired
