The U.S. Department of Justice dismantled the server infrastructure of the crypto laundering Huione Group — the largest hub for money laundering has been hit.
The U.S. Department of Justice announced the seizure of a cloud account that served as the foundation for the server infrastructure of Huione Group. It was through this account that key platforms involved in transferring and laundering funds obtained from crypto scams, cyberattacks, and other types of criminal activity operated. This is not just a one-time seizure, but a targeted strike against the technological foundation of an entire criminal ecosystem.
The investigation established that the seized infrastructure supported services for organizers of investment fraud, theft of digital assets, and trading of personal data. Related Telegram channels actively advertised "services" for money laundering, selling stolen data, and supporting fraudulent call centers. Huione Group, in essence, had become a centralized provider of financial and technological solutions for the entire crypto criminal world.
One of the Largest Centers of Crypto Crime
Huione Group has long been in the focus of U.S. regulators. As early as 2025, FinCEN (a division of the U.S. Treasury Department) recognized the company as a "primary money laundering concern," effectively cutting it off from the U.S. financial system. My assessments are fully confirmed by the numbers: according to the agency, from August 2021 to January 2025, at least $4 billion in illegal funds passed through the group's structures. This amount included 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. It was not just a "laundry," but a full-fledged crypto supermarket for criminals.
Pressure on Scammers' Infrastructure Intensifies
The seizure of server infrastructure is not just another police operation, but part of a systematic U.S. campaign against financial services serving transnational fraud networks in Southeast Asia. The Justice Department made it clear: the goal is not only to prosecute individual criminals, but also to completely destroy the infrastructure supporting the entire crypto scam ecosystem. This is a logical step, given the scale of the problem.
My expert assessment: This operation is an important but only a first step. According to Chainalysis, in 2025, over $154 billion entered illegal crypto wallets, a 162% increase compared to 2024. As long as such volumes remain in circulation, the emergence of new "crypto laundries" is only a matter of time. Regulators need not only to seize infrastructure, but also to more actively implement blockchain analysis technologies for the preventive blocking of such schemes.