American investigators have knocked out a key part of the digital machinery powering what officials describe as one of the busiest criminal bazaars ever built on the internet. The target this time was not a single website or account, but the entire technical setup that kept stolen money flowing around the world.
On Tuesday, the Justice Department said it had taken control of a cloud computing account operated by subsidiaries of the Huione Group, a Cambodia-based conglomerate accused of helping move billions of dollars tied to crypto investment fraud and cyber scams. Prosecutors say the account quietly ran the "backend infrastructure" for those subsidiaries, giving criminals a way to shuffle and conceal funds before slipping them into the banking system without being noticed.
'A Blow Against One of the World's Most Prolific Marketplaces'
"Today's seizure strikes a blow against one of the world's most prolific criminal marketplaces," said Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the Justice Department's Criminal Division. The account, he explained, acted as "a technological backbone that allowed billions in fraud proceeds to be transferred, moved, and concealed," with much of that money "stolen through Southeast Asian scam centers."
What Huione Guarantee Was
Court documents say the account helped run Huione Guarantee, also known as Haowang Guarantee, a Telegram-based marketplace where vendors dealt in stolen card and identity data, malware proceeds, and money-laundering services for romance and investment scams. It also operated escrow services that helped criminals, including money launderers, carry out transactions in crypto.
Blockchain analysts have called Huione Guarantee the largest illicit online marketplace ever, dwarfing dark-web predecessors such as Silk Road. Telegram banned its channels in May 2025, forcing it to close down, though replacement markets quickly sprang up to fill the void.
A Year-Long Squeeze
The seizure caps a full year of action against Huione. Last October, the Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) issued a final rule cutting Huione off from the U.S. financial system as a "primary money laundering concern," pointing to its role in laundering crypto-fraud proceeds and money from North Korean cyber heists. On Tuesday, FinCEN moved to extend that rule to a successor, H-Pay Service PLC, to stop the group from slipping past the ban under a new name.
Crypto Fraud Keeps Rising
Crypto-related fraud shows no sign of slowing. In 2025, Americans reported more than $7.2 billion in losses from crypto investment fraud alone to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center. That figure is part of more than $20 billion in total cybercrime losses last year, a 26% jump from the year before.
The case was investigated by the FBI's San Francisco field office and IRS Criminal Investigation, and forms part of Operation Riptide, an FBI campaign aimed at the infrastructure behind online fraud. The department credited blockchain analytics firms Chainalysis and Elliptic, along with Google's cybercrime team, with helping the effort.
Huione has shown a knack for regrouping whenever law enforcement closes in. It rolled out its own stablecoin, USDH, and pushed its activity onto affiliated platforms as the crackdown tightened.
