Widely used by fraudsters from Southeast Asia, the online marketplace Huione Guarantee conducted transactions in cryptocurrencies worth at least $11 billion, Elliptic researchers found.
A new investigation from the Elliptic research team sheds light on online marketplace Huione Guarantee. The platform is widely used by scam operators in South East Asia, including those involved in #pigbutchering scams. Read the full analysis ➡️ https://t.co/p9tqquGhJ6
— Elliptic (@elliptic) July 10, 2024The platform is part of the Huione Group conglomerate owned by Cambodia's ruling Hun family. It was created in 2021 as a marketplace for legal goods like real estate or cars. However, most of the offers on the marketplace are aimed at cyberbullying operators.
Huione Guarantee is a Chinese-language ecosystem consisting of thousands of messaging channels that are managed by individual merchants. The largest category of the latter offers money transfer and money laundering services.
Another category of merchants offers goods and services for the implementation of "pig butchering" schemes, when the victim is lured to invest cryptocurrency, which is then stolen. This includes the creation of fraudulent websites, telecommunications equipment, personal data to search for future victims, and AI-based software to create deepfakes.
For these scams, "fraudulent complexes" are widely used in the region, especially common in Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia. They usually resemble prisons in which workers are in the position of slaves.
Elliptic experts found advertisements on Huione Guarantee for products that are used by the owners of such enterprises to keep employees in line. This includes tear gas, electric batons and electronic bracelets that are electrocuted when leaving a certain area.
The analysis showed that the cryptocurrency wallets of the marketplace and merchants have received more than $11 billion since 2021. Experts believe that this amount is inconclusive, and the vast majority of the funds are related to illegal activities.
Elliptic noted the increase in the use of AI technologies in cybercrimes.