Elliptic Report has revealed that Cambodia’s online marketplace Huione Guarantee is being used as a medium to commit huge cryptocurrency scams to the tune of USD 11 Billion.
Huione Guarantee, linked to Cambodia’s ruling family, is said to enable different types of scams such as pig-butchering scams, an American-based magazine Wired alleged, relying on information from crypto-tracing firm Elliptic.
The report says the fraud was executed over the Telegram messaging system, where deposit and escrow services for peer-to-peer transactions were used through Cambodia’s ruling family’s platform.
The report says services such as deepfake scams, money laundering and pig butchering were listed, where some bad guys wooed their victims before being persuaded to make deposits using USDT, a stablecoin, and then disappeared after financially wrecking their victims.
WIRED quoted Elliptic’s co-founder and chief scientist Tom Robinson as saying that Elliptic was able to monitor the transactions because USDT can be traced over the blockchain.
The Elliptic’s executive however said he could say whether the Huione Guarantee was originally established to be a medium for online financial crimes, “but it’s certainly become primarily a marketplace for online scammers.”
According to Elliptic, Huione Guarantee is a subsidiary of Huione Group, a Cambodian conglomerate with links to Cambodia’s ruling Hun family”.
The $11 Billion Alleged Fraud Covers 2021-2024
According to Elliptic’s analysis, it shows that cryptocurrency wallets used by Huione Guarantee and its merchants have received over $11 billion since 2021, saying the figure could be higher because “information on their cryptocurrency wallets is not always available.”
The report clarified that not all transactions could be linked to fraud because researchers would need perfect knowledge of users’ source of funds or intended use of the products purchased.
It however, pointed out that the nature of the products and services advertised by these merchants and their open willingness to facilitate scams makes Huione Guarantee platform culpable in the acts, saying there are enough reasons to be convinced that the platform’s “ predominant role is to act as an illicit marketplace.”
Huione Guarantee or its parent company has not reacted to the allegations. Coidesk, a popular crypto-news platform says messages sent to the company seeking clarification and possible reaction have not been responded to at the time of publication.
Featured image:
- Advertisements on Huione Guarantee for electric shock shackles. Source: elliptic.co