Wallets Linked to Global Scams on Cambodia's Huione Guarantee Collect $11 Billion: Report

• Huione Guarantee, a Cambodian online platform said to be linked to the nation's ruling family, hosts merchants who allegedly supply scam operators and have collected as much as $11 billion in crypto, according to a research report.
• Services offered by merchants' customers include production of deepfakes, money laundering and website development for "pig butchering" scams, according to Wired.

Huione Guarantee, a Cambodian online financial platform linked to the nation's ruling family, is a marketplace that hosts merchants whose customers include scam artists, particularly those helping develop pig-butchering scams, that have raked in $11 billion, Wired alleged, citing its own research and information from crypto-tracing firm Elliptic.

Wired said the platform, which provides deposit and escrow capabilities for peer-to-peer transactions conducted over the Telegram messaging system, hosts listings that can be used for activities including deepfake scams, money laundering and so-called pig butchering, in which a victim is wooed before being financially drained by their apparent admirer.

Users transact primarily using USDT, the world's largest stablecoin. Because USDT can be traced over the blockchain, Elliptic said it was able to follow the fund flows.

“I’m not sure whether Huione Guarantee was originally established with this in mind, but it’s certainly become primarily a marketplace for online scammers,” Tom Robinson, Elliptic’s cofounder and chief scientist, told Wired.

According to Elliptic, Huione Guarantee is "part of Huione Group, a Cambodian conglomerate with links to Cambodia’s ruling Hun family," which includes Cambodia’s prime minister, Hun Manet.

"Because our services are all public, covering Asia, Europe and America, and the privacy attributes of cryptocurrency are superimposed, our KYC capabilities are now seriously insufficient," Huione Guarantee wrote in an email after this story was published. "Therefore, some hidden users may commit fraud and money laundering through loopholes in the rules, which is also a challenge faced by many banks in various regions around the world! ... We are cooperating with Elliptic to let them help us with high risk address identification. We have deleted the posts about selling illegal equipment mentioned by Elliptic."

The office of the Council of Ministers of Cambodia did not respond to an email seeking a comment sent after office hours.

The website includes the disclaimer: "Huiwang Guarantee does not participate in nor understand the specific business of customers. As the guarantor, we are only responsible for one party receiving the goods and the other party receiving the money," according to a Google translation.

In May, companies including Coinbase, Kraken, Meta, Ripple, Tinder and Hinge formed the "Tech Against Scams" coalition to protect users.

USDT's popularity as a medium for money laundering was mentioned in January by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). USDT issuer Tether said at the time that the stablecoin had been singled out.

When blockchain analysts choose to publicize their findings without engaging directly with counterparties this “encourages a bystander effect, where individuals and in this case companies, observe wrongdoing but choose to record it for social media engagement and notoriety – rather than prioritize intervention,” a Tether spokesperson said today.

Read More: UN Says Tether Plays Major Role in Illicit Activity in East Asia; Stablecoin Issuer Hits Back

CORRECTION (July 10, 13:20 UTC): Clarifies throughout that the activities are offered by third-party merchants through the platform, not by the platform itself.

UPDATE (July 16, 07:35 UTC): Adds company response, which arrived a week after the story was published.