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New York Times
02-05-2025
- Business
- New York Times
Trump Administration Moves to Blacklist a Financial Hub Used by Scammers
The Trump administration designated a Cambodian financial conglomerate as a money-laundering operation on Thursday, taking the first step to sever its access to the American financial system. The Treasury Department said that since August 2021, the company, Huione Group, and its affiliates had laundered $4 billion for criminals, including hackers in North Korea and scammers in Southeast Asia. 'Huione Group serves as a significant node of the money laundering ecosystem,' the Treasury said in a detailed report of the company's operations. A New York Times investigation in March found that Huione's group of companies were at the heart of a global money laundering network. Online scammers, who defraud victims with bogus investments or other schemes, rely on Huione and its affiliates to move money overseas while evading law enforcement authorities and banks' anti-laundering departments. The proposed rules represent the most significant effort to crack down on Huione, which has operated with impunity and has been linked to one of the world's largest illicit marketplaces. Huione did not immediately respond to requests for comment. If they come into force, the Treasury's proposed rules will stop U.S. banks from opening or maintaining accounts for Huione's group of companies. The rules will also require financial institutions to scrutinize transactions that may be linked to the Cambodian firm. At present, Huione's companies do not have a direct banking relationship with U.S. financial institutions, the Treasury said. Huione is best known in Cambodia for its QR codes, which customers use to pay bills in hotels, restaurants and supermarkets. But other Huione affiliates serve as clearinghouses for money launderers, The Times found. One company hosts an online bazaar, made up of thousands of Telegram chat groups, that connects scammers with money movers. Another is more directly involved in laundering money. A cousin of Cambodia's prime minister, Hun To, is a director of one Huione company. The Treasury Department said that Huione and its affiliates had laundered nearly $40 million from heists conducted by North Korean hackers, and the Lazarus Group in particular. The Lazarus Group is backed by the North Korean government and has been linked to major hacks and other online crimes. The blockchain analytics firm Ellipitic has previously called Huione's online bazaar the world's largest illicit internet market and has linked it to $26.8 billion in cryptocurrency transactions since 2021. 'I think this will be a big blow' to Huione Group, said Tim Robinson, a co-founder of Elliptic. 'It basically cuts them off from the U.S. financial system.' Still, many of the bazaar's public channels remained in operation in May, although Telegram has said that it shut down a number of them. Last year, the bazaar issued its own cryptocurrency, pegged to the U.S. dollar, which it said would not be subject to freezing orders from law-enforcement agencies. The Treasury described this as an 'unusual step' designed to sidestep anti-money laundering rules. The Treasury said that the parent company and its affiliates operated as 'one and the same,' and that the group had taken 'no meaningful steps' to address money laundering on its platforms. In March, the National Bank of Cambodia, which regulates financial institutions, said that it had not renewed the payment company's license to operate in Cambodia. The company responded by announcing plans to register in Japan and Canada. The Treasury requested comments on its proposed rules for 30 days after their publication in the Federal Register.
Time of India
01-05-2025
- Business
- Time of India
US cracks down on North Korea-linked Cambodian firm behind $4 Billion romance scam ring
Representative Image (Denny generated AI Image) A North Korea-linked Cambodian organisation has fraudulently obtained billions of dollars from US citizens through romance scams and cyber theft since August 2021, according to federal authorities' Thursday announcement of enforcement measures. Huione Group , an online marketplace, has facilitated North Korean and other criminal organisations in defrauding people through social media messages and texts, promoting fraudulent investments and "pig butchering" schemes. These deceptions, occurring on dating and professional networking platforms, have targeted US pensioners and others, encouraging them to invest in cryptocurrency and other digital assets before ultimately defrauding them. From August 2021 to January 2025, Huione accumulated over $4 billion from romance and investment fraud, with its subsidiaries Huione Pay PLC, Huione Crypto, and Haowang Guarantee supporting various aspects of the operation. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like AI guru Andrew Ng recommends: Read These 5 Books And Turn Your Life Around in 2025 Blinkist: Andrew Ng's Reading List Undo The US Treasury's FinCEN revealed exclusively to The New York Post that $37 million supported North Korean cyber operations, while $336 million came from romance and investment schemes. The Treasury is proposing regulations to block the Cambodian company's access to US financial systems. "Huione Group has established itself as the marketplace of choice for malicious cyber actors like the DPRK [North Korea] and criminal syndicates, who have stolen billions of dollars from everyday Americans," said treasury secretary Scott Bessent in a statement. Beth Hyland, 53, shared her experience of falling victim to a Tinder fraudster in 2024, losing $26,000 through Bitcoin transactions. The scammer, operating from Nigeria, posed as a construction manager and manipulated her through false promises of marriage and shared life. Senator Marsha Blackburn and colleagues recently introduced legislation requiring dating platforms to alert users who have engaged with known scammers. The action against Huione was taken under Section 311 of the PATRIOT Act, as the group failed to maintain proper customer verification and anti-money laundering protocols, including overlooking direct transfers from North Korean scam operations.
New York Post
01-05-2025
- Business
- New York Post
North Korea-linked gang ‘stole' billions from Americans through romance scams, online schemes
WASHINGTON — A Cambodia-based gang with ties to North Korea has 'stolen' billions of dollars from Americans through romance scams and other cyber-heists since August 2021, federal officials said Thursday in announcing a crackdown on the malign network. For years, the online marketplace Huione Group has helped North Korea and other transnational criminal gangs rip people off by sending texts or direct messages on social media platforms and sites to bilk them for fake investments or 'pig butchering.' The cons, which also take place on dating or professional networking sites, have gotten US retirees and others to invest in crypto or other virtual currencies — before eventually defrauding them. Advertisement Between August 2021 and January 2025, Huione raked in at least $4 billion in proceeds from the romance and investment racket, with affiliates helping facilitate payments (Huione Pay PLC), provide fiat currencies (Huione Crypto), and furnish an online marketplace with illicit goods and services (Haowang Guarantee). The US Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) shared the findings of its investigation into the Huione's scam network exclusively with The Post, tallying up $37 million that went toward North Korean cyber heists and another $336 million in the romance and investments grift. 4 A North Korea-linked group has 'stolen' billions of dollars from Americans through romance scams and other cyber-heists since August 2021, the feds say. AP Advertisement Now, the Treasury is taking action by proposing a federal rule to sever the Cambodian firm's access to the US financial system. 'Huione Group has established itself as the marketplace of choice for malicious cyber actors like the DPRK [North Korea] and criminal syndicates, who have stolen billions of dollars from everyday Americans,' said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in a statement 'Today's proposed action will sever Huione Group's access to correspondent banking, degrading these groups' ability to launder their ill-gotten gains. Treasury remains committed to disrupting any attempt by malicious cyber actors to secure revenue from or for their criminal schemes.' Beth Hyland, 53, told The Post in a phone interview Thursday that she had been the victim of a Tinder scammer in 2024 who kept 'manipulating me and gaslighting' until she forked over $26,000 through Bitcoin ATMs. Advertisement 4 The Treasury is taking action by proposing a federal rule Thursday to sever the Cambodian firm's access to the US financial system. Google Maps 'We started chatting and hit it off right away. We were going to meet. He said he was a freelance manager for a construction company,' Hyland recalled, explaining how the Nigeria-based con artist kept claiming he was locked out of his bank accounts and was hard up on funds to pay his workers. 'We were in love,' the Portage, Mich., resident said. 'I thought he was going to move near me and we were going to get a house. … We talked about getting married.' 'I took out loans and he told me to use Bitcoin ATMs to send him the money to pay for his translator,' she went on, recalling the swindler said he was based in Fort Wayne, Ind., and trying to pay out around $10 million to his employees, a lawyer and other parties. Advertisement At one point, he also 'claimed he was headed to Qatar for the payout,' she noted. 'He gave me the email and the login for his bank account. He gave me some fake login credentials and I was able to make this transfer.' 4 'Huione Group has established itself as the marketplace of choice for malicious cyber actors … who have stolen billions of dollars from everyday Americans,' said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. AP 'He was in Nigeria the whole time, probably in some office building scamming me,' she added, saying the fraudster 'still tried to come back' and woo her after her she went so far as to consider taking money out of her retirement fund before getting set straight by a personal finance adviser. 'I couldn't believe it, because my heart was so involved,' Hyland recounted. 'And it would have been another $50,000 had I kept going.' It took just five days to transfer the thousands of dollars Hyland cashed out through loans and turned into cryptocurrency by depositing $100 bills into Bitcoin ATMs. 'After it ended, I said, 'I'm not going to let this destroy me,' she also said, sharing that she would 'live my life and advocate.' 4 Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and other lawmakers in March introduced the Romance Scam Prevention Act to require dating apps and other sites to send fraud ban notifications to users who have interacted with similar scam artists. AP 'I'm writing a book that will have all the text messages that I had — so people can see the 'love bombing,'' she teased. Advertisement 'They focus on you, they tell you how wonderful they are — all kinds of manipulation — and it feels so real.' Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and other lawmakers introduced the Romance Scam Prevention Act last month to require dating apps and other sites to send fraud ban notifications to users who have interacted with similar scam artists. Huione's designation was made under Section 311 of the PATRIOT Act, which lets FinCEN crack down on entities engaged in money laundering or terror financing. The group had lacked effective 'know your customer' and 'anti-money laundering' policies, per Treasury officials, and had failed to identify direct transfers from a North Korean scam to one of its subsidiaries.
New York Times
23-03-2025
- Business
- New York Times
How We Investigated Money Laundering, and What We Found
We live in a scammer's world. We get texts from unknown numbers with an odd tone of familiarity. We have been promised breathtaking profits in ads on social media. We have encountered characters on dating apps who seemed too good to be true. It's not just us, of course. Most people have heard stories or know someone — a relative, colleague, neighbor — who fell for a ruse and lost money, perhaps even their life savings. But as our phones blew up with spam calls, we asked a different question. The scammers make billions of dollars every year. How do they turn this illicit cash into seemingly legitimate income? In other words, how do they wash it clean? So we followed the money. Our search took us from Hong Kong, where we are both based, to Cambodia. In the coastal city of Sihanoukville, we witnessed the enduring and notorious carnival of scams, operated from barbed-wire compounds or the upper floors of unfinished buildings. We met with scammers and their launderers at Chinese restaurants that line the beach. It took us a while to persuade insiders to speak to us but, in the end, about a half-dozen of them led us into their labyrinthine world. They showed us channels on the social media app Telegram where they conduct their trade. They taught us their jargon. And most important, they gave us a cache of documents, a kind of money-laundering handbook, that describes their methods in detail. The trail eventually led us to a Cambodian company called Huione Group, an established financial firm with numerous affiliates. Huione did not respond to our questions. Some of its affiliates, we found, have created the architecture needed to launder money. And profit at every step. You can hire a money launderer on Telegram. One of Huione's affiliate companies hosts an online bazaar where scammers and other criminals can find money launderers. The precise size of this marketplace is impossible to measure, but the analytics firm Elliptic has linked it to $26.8 billion in cryptocurrency transactions since 2021. The bazaar is made up of thousands of chat groups on Telegram where anonymous users advertise money laundering and other services. It makes money by charging for ads on public groups and from maintenance fees for the private ones. One channel called 'Demand and Supply' had more than 400,000 users and received hundreds of messages every day. After we sent questions to Huione Group and others in late February, Telegram said it had removed the channel. But another one quickly sprung up to replace it and had 250,000 members within a week. The bazaar denies any criminal association or any link to Huione Group. But it told customers on Telegram that Huione Group is one of its 'strategic partners and shareholders.' Once the scammers find money launderers, the conversations move to private groups where deals are hammered out. A 'matchmaker' will find the best deal. Another arm of the company, Huione International Pay, offers bespoke money laundering services, according to internal documents and two people familiar with its operations. This company serves as what it is known as a matchmaker — connecting criminals with people who control bank accounts or virtual wallets where the illicit money ends up. The matchmaker takes a cut, say 15 percent to launder money in the United States, and gives some of that to the account owners, known as money mules. Huione International Pay did not answer our questions. But scammers get scammed, too. One interesting feature of this world, we found, was the 'guarantee.' The online bazaar will, for a small fee, hold deposits in escrow to guarantee the transactions between criminals and money launderers. Why? Because scammers steal from each other. The deposits enforce honor among thieves. Most of the transactions are denominated in the cryptocurrency Tether. The mules take on the most risk. Once the matchmaker brokers a deal and a deposit is made, the money mules send over their bank account information. The criminal passes those numbers to the scam victim, who deposits money that will almost certainly never be seen again. Most of these accounts are only open for a matter of weeks. Importantly, the accounts have no direct link to the scammers themselves. That means, even if law enforcement agents or banks discover the accounts, they cannot easily trace the money to the criminals. Mules might get arrested. Scammers are harder to catch. Money hopscotches across the globe The mule quickly transfers the money from one account to another. Often, that first hop is out of the country. Sometimes, the money is broken into smaller chunks to avoid suspicion. In one case we reviewed, money defrauded from victims jumped from the United States to the Bahamas. From there, it was used to buy the cryptocurrency Tether. Finally, the mule takes a cut for services rendered, and sends the rest to the matchmaker. In the end, the criminal gets the bulk of the loot.
Yahoo
18-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Estimated $51bn lost to crypto crime in 2024, report finds
Despite an initial year-over-year decline in reported illegal crypto transactions, Chainalysis warns that 2024 may ultimately break records for illicit activity, with total volumes potentially exceeding $51bn (£39bn). The blockchain analytics firm emphasised that its figures are lower-bound estimates, meaning that real illicit volumes could be much higher as more addresses are identified. In 2023, the original reported total of $24.2bn was later revised to $46.1bn as more criminal transactions came to light. "A year from now, these totals will be higher, as we identify more illicit addresses and incorporate their historic activity into our estimates," Chainalysis said in its 2024 Crypto Crime Report. The firm attributes much of the increase to criminal organisations using blockchain-based laundering services, including vendors on platforms like Huione, which provide "on-chain infrastructure and laundering services for high-risk and illicit actors." Read more: How will AI change the world of scamming? | The Crypto Mile While the total amount of crypto crime appears to be rising, its share of total crypto transactions is shrinking. The percentage of attributed crypto transactions linked to crime fell to 0.14% in 2024, down from 0.61% in 2023. However, Chainalysis. warns that this share is likely to rise in the future as more illicit transactions are uncovered. "Based on historical growth rates, we suspect that this number will eventually exceed last year's total as our data attributions improve," the report said. North Korean-linked cybercriminals stole $1.34 billion in crypto this year, accounting for 61% of all stolen digital assets, according to Chainalysis. "Private key compromises accounted for the largest share (43.8%) of stolen crypto in 2024, with North Korean hackers stealing more from crypto platforms than ever before," the report stated. The hackers targeted both decentralised finance (DeFi) and centralised cryptocurrency platforms, shifting their focus throughout the year. "Some of these events appear to be linked to North Korean IT workers, who have been increasingly infiltrating crypto and web3 companies, compromising their networks, and using sophisticated tactics, techniques, and procedures," Chainalysis said. Fraud and scams remained a major source of illicit crypto activity in 2024, with high-yield investment scams and 'pig butchering' schemes being the most successful. Chainalysis also flagged an increase in the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to facilitate scams, including AI-generated sextortion schemes, which use personalised deepfake content to manipulate victims. The report also mentioned that AI-powered identity fraud was an increasing problem, enabling criminals to bypass Know Your Customer (KYC) checks when opening accounts on exchanges and DeFi platforms. Fraudsters are also leveraging guarantee services like Huione to build trust with victims, and crypto ATMs are emerging as a new vector for financial crime, particularly elder fraud schemes. This year, Chainalysis has introduced new methodologies to detect suspicious activity. The Chainalysis Signals tool enables investigators to estimate suspected illicit activity even when direct evidence is unavailable. "Signals leverages on-chain data and heuristics to identify the suspected category for a particular unknown address or cluster of addresses, with confidence levels ranging from likely to almost certain," the report said. One of the challenges in assessing crypto crime is how fraud cases like FTX's collapse are categorised. Chainalysis includes $8.7bn in creditor claims against the exchange in its 2022 illicit activity totals, but acknowledges that many cases of financial crime may not be fully reflected in the data. Read more: What are bitcoin ETNs? "There are almost certainly many instances where we do not have such confirmation, and therefore the numbers would not be reflected in our totals," the report noted Chainalysis estimated that annual illicit crypto activity has grown by an average of 25% year-over-year since 2020, and that if that trend holds, 2024's total could exceed $51bn — an all-time high. While law enforcement and blockchain analytics firms continue to develop more sophisticated tools to track illicit funds, criminals are also adapting. "As bad actors continue to evolve their tactics, so too will our methods of detecting and disrupting them," Chainalysis said. Read more: Why pension funds are buying bitcoin What we know about Elon Musk's controversial blockchain vision for US How AI could change the internet
