The Trump administration identified a Cambodian consortium as a financial institution of primary money-laundering concern last week, accusing it of laundering $4 billion as the “marketplace of choice for malicious cyber actors” like North Korea and scammers.
The Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) proposed severing the consortium, the Huione Group, from the U.S. financial system in response, pursuant to the rarely invoked Section 311 of the Patriot Act.
The FinCEN action follows investigative reporting by the crypto-compliance firm Elliptic, Wired and the New York Times into the Huione Group and its role in facilitating scams that have stolen from Americans and others around the world. It also follows a Kharon investigation last year that mapped out the Huione Group and its subsidiaries—including connections to Cambodian power and to human trafficking.
As the U.K., the UN and those outlets have documented, trafficking is a critical piece of how the region’s costly investment scams operate.
Inside the network: The Huione Group’s umbrella encompasses at least 11 organizations, primarily in Cambodia but also in Singapore and Poland. Its corporate presence includes two insurance companies, two cryptocurrency exchange platforms, and a home automation company that serves as an authorized distributor of a Chinese surveillance company on the U.S. Bureau of Industry and Security’s Entity List. Huione also runs unincorporated organizations in Cambodia, including a shooting range, Kharon found.
The Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) proposed severing the consortium, the Huione Group, from the U.S. financial system in response, pursuant to the rarely invoked Section 311 of the Patriot Act.
The FinCEN action follows investigative reporting by the crypto-compliance firm Elliptic, Wired and the New York Times into the Huione Group and its role in facilitating scams that have stolen from Americans and others around the world. It also follows a Kharon investigation last year that mapped out the Huione Group and its subsidiaries—including connections to Cambodian power and to human trafficking.
As the U.K., the UN and those outlets have documented, trafficking is a critical piece of how the region’s costly investment scams operate.
Inside the network: The Huione Group’s umbrella encompasses at least 11 organizations, primarily in Cambodia but also in Singapore and Poland. Its corporate presence includes two insurance companies, two cryptocurrency exchange platforms, and a home automation company that serves as an authorized distributor of a Chinese surveillance company on the U.S. Bureau of Industry and Security’s Entity List. Huione also runs unincorporated organizations in Cambodia, including a shooting range, Kharon found.
An image from the Facebook page of the Huione Military Club, a shooting range that the Huione Group operates.
The two crypto platforms, Huione Pay and Haowang Guarantee (which rebranded from Huione Guarantee after recent reporting), are the branches most under scrutiny. Both bring U.S. currency into the mix.
Huione Pay has a physical office in Cambodia’s capital of Phnom Penh, where customers can exchange cash for the U.S.-dollar-pegged cryptocurrency Tether, or USDT, even though Cambodia has banned the currency and private crypto transactions writ large. Haowang Guarantee, meanwhile, offers USDT-to-cash conversion and an extensive trading marketplace on Telegram. Blockchain transactions show that more than $2.6 billion worth of USDT has been transferred into and out of an address that was listed on Haowang Guarantee’s website as recently as September.
Huione financial services largely target Chinese speakers, including on Haowang Guarantee’s more than 1,000 unique Telegram channels and on several Chinese-language websites. That’s in spite of the fact that both Telegram and private crypto transactions are illegal in China.
The details: FinCEN’s news release called Huione Group “a critical node” for groups perpetrating “convertible virtual currency (CVC) investment scams in Southeast Asia.
In these scams, commonly known as “pig-butchering” scams, fraudsters gain victims’ trust (sometimes through establishing a false romantic relationship) and dupe them into investing in fake cryptocurrency projects. The stolen cryptocurrency can then be transferred to crypto exchanges and withdrawn via new, clean cryptocurrency addresses.
Elliptic reported last year that purported merchants on Haowang Guarantee’s marketplace “explicitly offer money laundering services,” while Huione Pay handles scam proceeds itself as a merchant on Haowang Guarantee.
Connecting the dots: One notable Huione Group manager is Hun To, who is a cousin of Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet and a nephew of the previous prime minister, Hun Sen. The director of at least two Huione Group companies, Hun also directs several companies in the Cambodia-based Heng He Group.
Another notable figure is Y Jun Chen, who was a director of Huione Group’s now-dissolved airline company and currently is a director of the U.K.-sanctioned T.C. Capital Co., Ltd (previously known as Golden Sun Sky Entertainment Co., Ltd.). The U.K. designated that company, located in the resort city of Sihanoukville, in 2023 for its “links to forced labour schemes.”
Huione Pay has a physical office in Cambodia’s capital of Phnom Penh, where customers can exchange cash for the U.S.-dollar-pegged cryptocurrency Tether, or USDT, even though Cambodia has banned the currency and private crypto transactions writ large. Haowang Guarantee, meanwhile, offers USDT-to-cash conversion and an extensive trading marketplace on Telegram. Blockchain transactions show that more than $2.6 billion worth of USDT has been transferred into and out of an address that was listed on Haowang Guarantee’s website as recently as September.
Huione financial services largely target Chinese speakers, including on Haowang Guarantee’s more than 1,000 unique Telegram channels and on several Chinese-language websites. That’s in spite of the fact that both Telegram and private crypto transactions are illegal in China.
The details: FinCEN’s news release called Huione Group “a critical node” for groups perpetrating “convertible virtual currency (CVC) investment scams in Southeast Asia.
In these scams, commonly known as “pig-butchering” scams, fraudsters gain victims’ trust (sometimes through establishing a false romantic relationship) and dupe them into investing in fake cryptocurrency projects. The stolen cryptocurrency can then be transferred to crypto exchanges and withdrawn via new, clean cryptocurrency addresses.
Elliptic reported last year that purported merchants on Haowang Guarantee’s marketplace “explicitly offer money laundering services,” while Huione Pay handles scam proceeds itself as a merchant on Haowang Guarantee.
Connecting the dots: One notable Huione Group manager is Hun To, who is a cousin of Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet and a nephew of the previous prime minister, Hun Sen. The director of at least two Huione Group companies, Hun also directs several companies in the Cambodia-based Heng He Group.
Another notable figure is Y Jun Chen, who was a director of Huione Group’s now-dissolved airline company and currently is a director of the U.K.-sanctioned T.C. Capital Co., Ltd (previously known as Golden Sun Sky Entertainment Co., Ltd.). The U.K. designated that company, located in the resort city of Sihanoukville, in 2023 for its “links to forced labour schemes.”
According to the designation notice, Golden Sun Sky Entertainment “violate[d] the right not to be subjected to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment or the right not to be required to perform forced or compulsory labour.”
The bottom line: FinCEN’s proposed rules, if they take effect, would block Huione Group from accessing U.S. accounts. But its network and its Telegram channels remain active.
Even since last week, though, Treasury already has ramped up enforcement against Asian cyberscam actors: On Monday, it designated another group, in Burma.
Read more from the Kharon Brief:
The bottom line: FinCEN’s proposed rules, if they take effect, would block Huione Group from accessing U.S. accounts. But its network and its Telegram channels remain active.
Even since last week, though, Treasury already has ramped up enforcement against Asian cyberscam actors: On Monday, it designated another group, in Burma.
Read more from the Kharon Brief:
