On September 9, the U.S. Department of the Treasury added a Chinese platform called Xinbi Guarantee (New Taiwan Dollar Guarantee) to its sanctions list, deeming it a transnational criminal organization.
The business this platform does is guarantee transactions—acting as an intermediary that holds funds for both the buyer and the seller. But of the two parties it serves, one side is the operators of scam syndicate areas in Southeast Asia, while the other side is merchants who sell money-laundering channels and the tools used for committing the crimes to them.
And the items listed on this platform are completely different from ordinary online shopping.
What the scam gang wants is a shell bank account, leaked lists of personal data, payment channels that can receive money, and services that convert stolen funds into currency and send them out of the country. But in these kinds of transactions, neither side trusts the other. Pay first and you’re afraid you won’t get the goods; ship first and you’re afraid you won’t get paid. And if something goes wrong, neither side can report it to the police.
That’s why a platform is needed to act as the middleman: the buyer first escrows the USDT on the platform; after the seller delivers the goods, the platform releases the payment, and the platform takes a cut.
In other words, crypto-USDT escrow is a marketplace that turns what the scammer needs into something people can place orders for.
According to a press release from the Ministry of Finance, since this marketplace was established in 2022 up to now, the amount handled has exceeded $24 billion, which is equivalent to more than NT$750 billion.
In a statement, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said, “Every year, scam compounds in Southeast Asia steal tens of billions of dollars from U.S. victims.”
On the same day, the U.S. Secret Service froze $52.8 million in USDT across 52 wallets, including about $12 million from two wallets seized directly pursuant to court warrants.
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But on the list of crypto-USDT escrow items, the hardest part is to convert the money obtained from victims into coins and get them sent out. Just because a scam group managed to trick people out of money doesn’t mean they can take it away. As long as the money remains in the bank account, it can be frozen at any time.
You might say this is a matter of Southeast Asian countries and has nothing to do with Taiwanese people.
Actually, in Taiwan too, people are doing money-laundering services offered through crypto-USDT escrow, and even set it up as a chain store. On July 16 this year, the District Court of Shilin handed down a first-instance sentence of 22 years in prison to施啟仁, the person in charge of “Coin Think Technology,” and confiscated criminal proceeds of NT$43,718,505.
In Taiwan, Coin Think Technology opened 45 franchised outlets, which was the largest virtual-asset service provider in the country at the time.
The criminal facts determined by the court are:
Within 1 year, laundered NT$2.3 billion for the scam group
Colluded with a scam group; illicit proceeds totaled as much as NT$1.275 billion
More than 1,000 people were deceived and reported the crimes; based on this, the court determined 485 counts of aggravated fraud and money laundering
And their method is to turn the final step of the scam’s money flow into a legitimate storefront on the street. Using scripted talk, they get the victim to walk into the branch and deposit cash into the store’s cash-in machine. Then the security company loads the money and stores it in a bank account, converts it into USDT, and transfers it to the wallet specified by the scam group.
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In my observation, what is truly worth remembering is that scams already have a fully divided and specialized industrial chain.
Most parts of this industrial chain can be moved overseas. The compound can be set up in Southeast Asia, the scriptwriting can be outsourced, and the servers can be placed somewhere you can’t trace.
Only the part that involves collecting cash from Taiwanese people can’t be moved offshore, because people are in Taiwan and the cash has to be handled in person by someone. So when such cases occur in Taiwan, it’s not an accident.
But for passersby, that shop is no different from any other coin dealer. It has a sign, staff, and even displays anti-money-laundering statements from the Financial Supervisory Commission.
Remember: no matter how reasonable the explanation sounds, if someone asks you to bring cash to a certain shop to exchange it for coins, or to put it into a machine inside the shop, don’t believe them easily. If you want to buy coins, transfer money from your own bank account to the exchange so that every transaction leaves a record.
Have you ever bought coins with cash at a physical store? Feel free to share with me~
⚠️ The content above is for reference only and does not constitute any investment advice.