An online marketplace known as HuiOne Guarantee has been discovered by cryptocurrency experts and is widely used by cybercriminals in Southeast Asia, particularly those involved in pig butchering scams.
In a report provided to The Hacker News, Elliptic stated, “Merchants on the platform offer technology, data, and money laundering services, and have engaged in transactions totaling at least $11 billion.”
According to the British blockchain analytics company, the marketplace is a part of the HuiOne Group, a Cambodian conglomerate with ties to the ruling Hun family in Cambodia, and another HuiOne company, HuiOne International Payments, is actively involved in laundering proceeds from scams around the world.
HuiOne’s financial services division is said to have 500,000 registered users, according to its website. It also boasts PayGo Wallet, UnionPay, Alipay, Huawei, and Yes Seatel as customers.
Southeast Asian nations like Cambodia, Laos, Burma, Malaysia, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos and the Philippines have turned into a favorable place for pig butchering tricks as of late.
In these schemes, unwitting individuals from Asia and Africa are lured to the region with high-paying jobs, only to be forced into participating in fraudulent activities in “scam compounds” run by transnational organized crime groups based in China.
These involve creating fake accounts on dating and social media sites, then using those accounts to develop romantic relationships with victims and eventually convince them to invest in fictitious crypto businesses in order to steal their money.
Established in 2021, HuiOne Guarantee consists of a network of thousands of Telegram channels for instant messaging apps run by various businesses. Elliptic said that while it claims to be a marketplace for cars and real estate, the majority of the goods and services it offers are aimed at cyber scammers.
The company explained, “Those offering to move and exchange money are the largest category of merchants operating on HuiOne Guarantee.”
“Many of the merchants explicitly offer services for money laundering, such as accepting payments from victims worldwide, transferring them across borders, and converting them into other assets like cash, stablecoins, and to Chinese payment apps.”
Traders have additionally been found publicizing software and web development benefits that work with the production of trick crypto investment sites utilized in pig butchering scams, as well as advertising tear gas, electric batons and electronic shackles for use by scam compound operators to imprison and torture their laborers.
Elliptic stated, “HuiOne Guarantee and its merchants’ value of cryptocurrency and the type of goods and services offered suggest that it is a key enabler of cyber scam operators in South East Asia.”
