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The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) announced on June 23 the seizure of a cloud computing account used by subsidiaries of the Huione Group, a Southeast Asian digital asset conglomerate accused of running a multimillion-dollar money-laundering operation.

According to the DOJ, the subsidiaries in question allegedly assisted individuals and organizations in transferring proceeds from digital currency investment fraud, cyber scams, and other blockchain-based crimes. The seized account hosted backend infrastructure for the subsidiaries, which the DOJ said allowed for the proceeds of these schemes to be transferred to the legitimate banking sector undetected.

“Today’s seizure strikes a blow against one of the world’s most prolific criminal marketplaces,” said Assistant Attorney General Andrew Tysen Duva of the DOJ’s Criminal Division. “The Huione Group used this cloud computing account as part of a technological backbone that allowed billions in fraud proceeds to be transferred, moved, and concealed — much of it stolen through Southeast Asian scam centers.”

Huione Group (Huione)—which is based in Cambodia but has subsidiaries in Hong Kong, Canada, Poland, and Singapore—is the parent company of escrow/marketplace platform Huione Guarantee, which attempted to rebrand in 2024 as Haowang Guarantee to distance itself from its increasingly notorious parent company.

The operation as a whole is alleged to have operated Telegram channels that contained discussions regarding illicit products and services, ranging from the sale of stolen credit card and identity information, to the fruits of malware-enabled thefts and the procurement of individuals for human trafficking schemes, as well as assistance with laundering the proceeds of romance and investment scams.

The action against Huione is part of ‘Operation Riptide,’ a 60-day coordinated offensive started by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on June 9, targeting the criminal actors, infrastructure, and financial networks behind cybercrime, cyber-enabled crime, and fraud against U.S. citizens.

According to the DOJ, Americans filed more than 1 million complaints in 2025, reporting over $20 billion in losses from online fraud—a figure that marks a 26% increase in a single year; Operation Riptide is the FBI’s sustained enforcement response to this threat.

Huione under the spotlight

Huione Group has been on the radar of cybercrime enforcement for some time. In April 2025, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) published a report accusing the Southeast Asian conglomerate of having laundered at least $24 billion by the end of 2024.

“Huione Guarantee…has emerged as one of the world’s largest illicit online marketplaces by users and transaction volume, representing a key piece of infrastructure driving cyber-enabled fraud in Southeast Asia,” read the report. “Huione Guarantee has processed tens of billions of dollars in cryptocurrency transactions since 2021, with on-chain analysis indicating that the platform has become a one-stop-shop for illicit actors sourcing the technology, infrastructure, data, and other resources needed to conduct cyber-enabled fraud and cybercrime, as well as large-scale money laundering and sanctions evasion.”

According to the DOJ’s latest announcement, U.S. law enforcement has been continuously tracing cyber-enabled fraud proceeds to cryptocurrency addresses associated with the Huione Group, including Huione Guarantee, where the funds were subsequently laundered.

The Justice Department revealed that Tuesday’s account seizure operation was conducted by the FBI’s San Francisco Field Office, in cooperation with the intelligence teams at blockchain analysis firms Chainalysis and Elliptic, as well as Google’s CyberCrime Investigation Team (NASDAQ: GOOGL).

“The FBI is committed to disrupting the infrastructure and services that cybercriminals rely on to profit from their illegal activity,” said Assistant Director Brett Leatherman of the FBI’s Cyber Division. “Today’s action targets a key enabler of cyber-enabled fraud and money laundering schemes, demonstrating that the FBI will pursue not only the perpetrators, but also the services that support their criminal operations.”

The DOJ urged any victims of cybercrime schemes, such as those facilitated by Huione, to report the crime to the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), as the FBI and other law enforcement can use these complaints to investigate, trace stolen funds, and build cases against those responsible for the offenses.

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