Key Takeaways
- OFAC sanctioned 26 entities linked to Prince Group, next blocking Huione from U.S. financial markets.
- Chainalysis reported Huione Guarantee processed $70B in crypto, forcing tighter P2P market rules.
- After a 5-year run, the FBI seized Huione’s cloud systems to dismantle global crypto scam markets.
US Treasury Hits Huione Group’s Crypto Money Laundering Cloud Infrastructure
The Trump Administration is intensifying its effort to fight groups that target Americans and those who facilitate the laundering of proceeds of these operations.
The U.S. Treasury announced it took action against Huione Group, a financial services conglomerate based in Cambodia that served as an enabler of the Prince Group, a transnational criminal organization (TCO) that operates compounds in Asia targeting Americans with romantic fraud scams known as pig butchering operations.
On Tuesday, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated nine individuals and 26 entities linked to Prince Group, with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) amending an earlier rule to include H-Pay Service and any successor entities to it, which ordered “a prohibition on covered financial institutions from opening or maintaining a correspondent account for, or on behalf of, Huione Group in order to guard against the money laundering risks to the U.S. financial system posed by Huione Group.”
“The Trump Administration is united in its efforts to dismantle these overseas criminal enterprises, and Treasury will continue using its tools to disrupt the networks behind this egregious fraud and protect Americans,” said Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent.
In addition, the FBI seized the infrastructure used by Huione to scam Americans. Chainalysis, a blockchain auditing and security firm that collaborated in this operation, estimated that Huione Guarantee, a peer-to-peer marketplace operated by Huione Group, processed over $70 billion in crypto over the last 5 years, offering illicit services to users and providing a money laundering front for the Prince Group.
Chainalysis stressed that, instead of targeting traditional banking channels, this time the seizure went deeper, with the Department of Justice gaining control of cloud computing accounts that hosted and supported Huione’s backend systems.
“The Huione takedown shows what’s possible when law enforcement and blockchain intelligence work together. Chainalysis is proud to have contributed to this investigation. Criminal networks adapt, and so do we,” the firm concluded.
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