The U.S. Department of Justice has dismantled key infrastructure of the "crypto laundering" Huione Group — servers used to launder billions have been seized.
The U.S. Department of Justice has dealt a serious blow to one of the largest centers of crypto crime in Southeast Asia. During the operation, the agency seized a cloud account used by Huione Group structures to host server infrastructure. It was through these servers that platforms and channels operated, facilitating the transfer and laundering of funds obtained from crypto scams, cyberattacks, and other types of illegal activity.
The investigation established that the seized account was a critically important link in the Huione Group ecosystem. It ran services for organizers of investment fraud, cryptocurrency theft, trading in personal data, and even supporting the operations of fraudulent call centers. Related Telegram channels actively advertised money laundering services and the sale of stolen data.
One of the largest centers of crypto crime
Huione Group has long been under close scrutiny by U.S. regulators. As early as 2025, the U.S. Treasury Department's FinCEN designated the company as a "primary money laundering concern," effectively cutting it off from the U.S. financial system. According to the agency's estimates, from August 2021 to January 2025, at least $4 billion in illicit funds passed through the group's structures. This amount includes money from cryptocurrency fraud, cyberattacks by North Korean hackers, and other criminal schemes.
The ecosystem included the payment service Huione Pay, the cryptocurrency platform Huione Crypto, and the marketplace Haowang Guarantee (formerly Huione Guarantee). Analysts called the latter the largest illegal online platform for servicing crypto scammers.
Pressure on scammers' infrastructure intensifies
The seizure of server infrastructure is not just a single operation, but part of a systemic U.S. campaign against financial services that support transnational fraud networks in Southeast Asia. The Justice Department emphasized that the goal is not only to prosecute individual criminals but also to destroy the very infrastructure that enables the entire crypto scam ecosystem to function.
Let me remind you that in 2025, according to a Chainalysis report, over $154 billion was sent to illicit cryptocurrency wallets — a 162% increase compared to 2024. This indicates the enormous scale of the problem, and operations like the seizure of Huione Group's infrastructure are vitally necessary. However, in my opinion, this is just the tip of the iceberg: as long as there is demand for laundering services and weak regulatory regimes in some regions, such networks will resurface. The key challenge is not just to shut down individual servers, but to create global mechanisms that make such schemes unprofitable.