Telegram Purged Chinese Crypto Scam Markets—Then Watched as They Rebuilt
One month ago, the messaging app Telegram summarily beheaded the online industry of Chinese-language crypto scam services: It banned virtually all accounts related to the first and second most popular marketplaces for vendors offering money laundering, stolen data, and a variety of other illicit wares to the vast criminal enterprises carrying out investment scams from compounds across Southeast Asia.
Then, Telegram watched impassively as those black marketeers rebranded, rebuilt, and returned to business as usual on the messaging service's platform.
On Monday, crypto tracing firm Elliptic published a new report showing how the industry of Telegram-based Chinese-language black markets for crypto scammers has bounced back in the wake of Telegram's takedown last month of the two biggest of those bazaars, known as Haowang Guarantee and Xinbi Guarantee. Before Telegram banned the two markets' channels and usernames on May 13, they had together enabled a staggering $35 billion in transactions, much of which represented money laundering by crypto scam operations that steal billions from Western victims and force tens of thousands of people to carry out scams in forced labor compounds across Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos. Since Telegram's purge, however, Elliptic has found that other smaller markets have now grown to almost entirely fill the vacuum those two key marketplaces left behind—and Telegram appears to have no plans to stop them.
In particular, one market called Tudou Guarantee, partially owned by Huione Group, the same parent company as the now-defunct Haowang Guarantee, has more than doubled in size, likely taking in many of the scammer-friendly services displaced by Telegram's bans and again enabling those fraudsters' billions of dollars a year in illicit revenue. Its main channel now has 289,000 users by Elliptic's count, close to the 296,000 users that Haowang Guarantee had at its peak. Xinbi Guarantee, too, has relaunched on new channels and regained hundreds of thousands of users, Elliptic says. In terms of sales, Tudou is now enabling around $15 million a day in crypto payments, close to the $16.4 million Haowang was facilitating daily, according to Elliptic.
'Telegram recognized this was illicit activity and the kind they didn't want to be hosting, and so they deleted the channels and banned the associated usernames. But it was clear that these people wouldn't just give up, that they would transfer to different marketplaces,' says Tom Robinson, Elliptic's cofounder. 'These scammers have inflicted misery on millions of victims around the world, stealing billions of dollars. Unless these marketplaces are actively pursued, they will continue to flourish.'
Posts Elliptic shared with WIRED from Tudou Guarantee—now by some measures the biggest black market on the internet—show examples of money laundering services, offers of scam website development, and vendors selling stolen personal data that scammers use for targeting. Another Tudou post explicitly offers prostitution, including references to possible minors: 'Students, queens, lolita,' the post states next to pictures of young women. 'All available!!'
WIRED reached out to Tudou Guarantee for comment via an administrator's Telegram account but didn't receive a response.
Before they were taken down by Telegram, Xinbi Guarantee and Haowang Guarantee displayed similar posts offering explicitly illegal services in all those categories and more. Like the newly ascendant Tudou Guarantee, those other 'Guarantee' marketplaces didn't directly sell services, but instead offer escrow and deposit features that prevent vendors from defrauding customers.
When WIRED asked Telegram in May about a report from Elliptic that focused on Xinbi Guarantee's criminal offerings, Telegram responded with a broad purge: It banned not only Xinbi's accounts but also those of Haowang Guarantee, the much larger market that had persisted for three years, enabled around $27 billion in transactions, and sold scam industry services as explicit as the batons and shackles used to imprison forced laborers in scam compounds.
In a statement sent to WIRED at the time, Telegram spokesperson Remi Vaughn wrote that 'communities previously reported to us by WIRED or included in reports published by Elliptic have all been taken down,' and added that 'criminal activities like scamming or money laundering are forbidden by Telegram's terms of service and are always removed whenever discovered.'
Since then, however, Elliptic has continued to share its findings about apparent money laundering activity on ten other markets, including Tudou Guarantee, in a Telegram group that included a WIRED reporter and a Telegram spokesperson. Yet Telegram didn't take down any of the accounts related to the black markets Elliptic highlighted. Xinbi Guarantee has, in fact, rebuilt at new accounts without even rebranding. It still hasn't faced new account bans, despite Telegram itself stating that the market's content violated its terms of service.
In a statement to WIRED, a Telegram spokesperson defended the company's apparent decision not to ban the rebounding black markets. 'The channels in question predominantly involve users from China, where rigid capital controls often leave citizens with little choice but to seek alternative avenues for moving funds internationally,' the statement reads. "We assess reports on a case-by-case basis and categorically reject blanket bans—particularly when users are attempting to circumvent oppressive restrictions imposed by authoritarian regimes. We remain unwavering in our commitment to safeguarding user privacy and defending fundamental freedoms, including the right to financial autonomy.'
Elliptic's Robinson rejects that argument. 'We've been researching these marketplaces for nearly two years now, and they're not about helping people achieve financial autonomy,' Robinson says. 'These are marketplaces that primarily facilitate money laundering for the proceeds of fraud and other illicit activity."
Erin West, a former prosecutor who now leads the non-profit Operation Shamrock, an organization focused on disrupting crypto scam operations, states her accusation against Telegram more simply. 'These are bad guys, enabling bad guy business on their bad guy platform,' West argues. 'They have the ability to shut down a scam economy and the trafficking of human beings. Instead, they're hosting Craigslist for crypto scammers.'
Telegram's seemingly inconsistent approach to banning crypto scam black markets may have less to do with its principles of 'financial autonomy' than with trying not to run afoul of the US government, says Jacob Sims, a visiting fellow at Harvard University's Asia Center. In early May, the US Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network officially labeled Huione Group a 'primary money laundering concern.' Sims argues that designation, which referred directly to Haowang Guarantee but not Tudou Guarantee, may have spurred Telegram to take action—and that it may take another similar move at the government level to push Telegram to act again.
'Ultimately, last month's crackdown shows how disruptive Telegram can be when it does cooperate, but it also shows how fast the scammers are going to adapt,' Sims says. 'There's no real legal culpability that tech companies have for what happens on their platform unless there's a specific case brought to their attention by law enforcement. And so, until that changes, I just don't know what incentive they have to be proactive.'
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