Chinese criminal syndicates have turned Telegram into a central distribution node for large-scale cryptocurrency fraud, using the platform’s features to run organized marketplaces and guarantee services that generate tens of billions of dollars annually. This shift concentrates targeted scams, money-laundering services, and AI-enhanced deception on Telegram, amplifying cross-border illicit finance and complicating enforcement.
Why Telegram’s design enables organized crypto fraud
Telegram’s product features—pseudo-anonymity, large public and private channels, secret chats and bot automation—create low-friction infrastructure for coordinated criminal operations. These features allow operators to broadcast fraudulent offers, coordinate money-mule networks, and automate escrow-like services at scale, lowering coordination costs while increasing reach.
Telegram has, at times, framed its stance around providing “financial freedom” for users circumventing capital controls, a position that has been used by some actors to justify platform use and normalize activity that facilitates illicit finance. This framing can be leveraged to legitimize participation and reduce the perceived stigma around activity that enables illicit finance.
A small set of Chinese-language guarantee marketplaces anchor the ecosystem. These guarantee marketplaces function as informal escrow services and trading hubs for fraudulent investments, stolen data, and other illicit goods.
Be careful ⚠️⚠️⚠️
a FAKE telegram channel is trying to scam Smardex holders
There is NO V3 migration,
DO NOT FALL FOR SUCH SCAMthe official updates can ONLY be received through their website https://t.co/Ghz45GSSnI, their X: @SmarDex and their official TG (its link is in… pic.twitter.com/cESr07yx4e
— Crypto Feras (@CryptoFeras) November 5, 2025
Huione Guarantee is estimated to have facilitated about $27bn in transactions between 2021 and 2025, a volume that surpasses historical darknet markets in cumulative size and underpins the claim of an industry-scale fraud economy. In this environment, “pig butchering” describes romance scams that build trust over time before steering victims into staged, fake cryptocurrency investment platforms.
Scammers also monetize identity theft, malware and access to hacked credentials, and stablecoins are frequently used as the payment rail within these channels. The combination of escrow-like services, on-demand money mules, and automated payment routing produces financial flows that are large, fast, and hard to trace.
Law enforcement and financial regulators have responded. The U.S. Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network designated Huione Group as a primary money-laundering concern, and Telegram has removed prominent marketplaces. Despite sanctions and takedowns, actors rapidly rebrand and migrate across channels and jurisdictions, creating a persistent “whack-a-mole” enforcement problem.
Artificial intelligence amplifies the threat by enabling scalable personalization and synthetic media. Operators use AI-generated voice clones, deepfake videos, and automated message generation to sustain massive volumes of tailored interactions and to evade or circumvent KYC controls.
The concentration of organized crypto fraud on Telegram raises systemic risks for market integrity and cross-border AML enforcement, forcing compliance teams and platforms to adapt fast. This concentration increases pressure on monitoring, remediation, and enforcement capabilities across jurisdictions.