According to a recent Elliptic report, many cryptocurrency scams are committed by members of transnational organized criminal groups that operate from specially created "fraud complexes" located throughout Southeast Asia, especially in Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia.
For example, the online marketplace Huione Guarantee, owned by the Cambodian conglomerate Huione Group, acts as a kind of clearing house with thousands of channels and instant messaging applications, each of which is managed by a separate seller.
A study of the Huione Guarantee website conducted by Elliptic showed that some merchants openly offer their clients services for laundering stolen crypto assets, sell software and web development tools to create fraudulent sites, and actively participate in fraudulent schemes.
According to Elliptic experts, over the past three years, sellers of virtual services from Southeast Asia have spent more than $11 billion through cryptocurrency wallets registered on the Huione Guarantee platform.
Analysts clarified that not all transactions mentioned in the report can be classified as fraudulent. However, the available evidence provides "very good reasons to believe that most of the transactions are related to illegal activities."
The emergence of specialized online stores openly offering illegal services is taking crypto fraud in Southeast Asia to a new level, according to the Elliptic report.
Earlier, the Belgian Financial Services and Markets Authority (FSMA) reported that in the first half of the year, the number of cases of fraud with digital assets increased by 44% compared to January-June last year.