Telegram Is Still Hosting a Sanctioned $21 Billion Crypto Scammer Black Market

Despite its reputation as a bastion for privacy and anti-censorship, Telegram has morphed into the world's most efficient money laundering service for human traffickers. This paradox defines the current state of the platform, where mechanisms designed to protect dissidents now openly facilitate a sanctioned $21 billion criminal empire known as Xinbi Guarantee. Even though the UK government officially designated this black market as an enabler of human trafficking and fraud, it continues to operate in plain sight on Telegram with no signs of removal.

The Sanction Blind Spot: Why Telegram Remains Silent

For three and a half years, Telegram has served as the digital headquarters for Xinbi Guarantee, an anarchic Chinese-language bazaar offering money laundering services to crypto scammers and listings for teen prostitution. The scale of this failure is staggering; after the UK government slapped sanctions on Xinbi in late March, Elliptic observed that the platform facilitated $505 million in transactions over just 19 days while adding tens of thousands of new users.

The UK's Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office officially sanctioned Xinbi Guarantee on March 26 due to its role in enabling scam centers across Southeast Asia where individuals face cruel treatment, slavery, and forced labor. Yet, nearly three weeks into this official crackdown, Telegram has not removed a single account associated with the marketplace. This lack of action stands in stark contrast to the company's historical responses; notably, Telegram did purge accounts for Xinbi Guarantee and another major market, Huione Guarantee, last year after public exposure by researchers.

However, that previous ban proved temporary at best. Once regulatory heat subsided or pressure shifted, the black markets simply rebuilt their operations on the platform. Gary Warner, director of intelligence at DarkTower, describes Telegram's current tolerance as baffling and unprecedented in the corporate world: "There is literally no legitimate company in the world that hosts this level of criminal activity and is so open about it."

The Privacy Shield vs. Criminal Reality

Telegram's leadership continues to defend its hosting of these marketplaces by framing them as essential tools for financial autonomy in authoritarian regimes. A spokesperson previously argued that banning such markets would deny Chinese citizens "alternative avenues for moving funds internationally" against rigid government controls. This narrative, however, has been systematically dismantled by real-world evidence showing Xinbi's primary function is not political activism but the laundering of stolen crypto assets and the supply of tools for violent crime.

Elliptic's findings contradict the "innocuous alternative" narrative entirely, revealing a marketplace where listings explicitly offer:

  • Electrified batons and tasers intended to maintain control over human trafficking victims in scam compounds
  • Harassment-for-hire services, including threats of violence or throwing feces at designated targets for a fee
  • Child sex trafficking, with recent listings describing 16-year-old victims, complete with body measurements and available acts

The argument that these services support political dissent becomes untenable when the platform hosts the very equipment used to inflict cruelty on enslaved workers. Tom Robinson, co-founder of Elliptic, emphasizes that while the "financial freedom" defense was weak to begin with, the UK's official sanctioning makes it virtually impossible for Telegram to justify its continued inaction. The sanctions represent an official recognition that Xinbi is a predominantly illicit actor, stripping away any plausible deniability regarding its purpose.

A Call for Global Accountability and Legal Consequences

The persistence of Xinbi Guarantee on Telegram highlights a broader failure of international cooperation and corporate responsibility. While Russian cybercriminals hosting black markets have faced repeated seizures, arrests, and coordinated law enforcement crackdowns, the Telegram ecosystem remains largely untouched despite facilitating a criminal network orders of magnitude larger. Security researchers are now calling for an international task force to target not just the criminals using the platform, but the infrastructure providers enabling them.

Gary Warner argues that Pavel Durov, Telegram's founder and CEO, should face similar scrutiny as those behind major cybercriminal enterprises: "He should be hunted down and arrested." Warner suggests that the company's refusal to enforce its own terms of service against a sanctioned entity requires legal consequences beyond mere public statements. With Xinbi already attempting to migrate users to a new platform called SafeW to evade potential future bans, the window for effective intervention is narrowing.

For now, Telegram remains the world's most active host of a $21 billion crypto scam black market, operating under a banner of privacy that has been stripped away by the sheer volume of documented criminal activity. The question is no longer whether the platform will clean up its act, but whether international authorities will finally treat this digital safe haven for human traffickers as a national security threat rather than a free speech debate. Until then, the black market continues to thrive, processing illicit deals while regulators and law enforcement watch from the sidelines.