America Froze $52 Million But Scam Factories Survive -By Fransiscus Nanga Roka

Washington has really hit the digital bloodstream of Xinbi Guarantee. Organism that has not (yet) killed the organism.

The US Justice Department’s Scam Center Strike Force on Sept. 9, 2026 announced Telegram infrastructure and two crypto wallets holding an estimated $12 million had been seized by authorities as well as a restraint placed on 47 other wallets associated with Xinbi vendors. Another $52 million was rendered inactive in a single day, and the task force’s total settled holdings came to about $938 million.

The operation was conducted on the basis of a September 7 warrant from the US District Court for the District of Columbia. Meanwhile, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control labeled Xinbi a major transnational criminal organization and hit two supporting entities with sanctions. Any property located within the US jurisdiction, or owned by a US person227 must now be blocked and reported.

Who was targeted? Xinbi : a Chinese-language marketplace on Telegram.

What did it sell? Not ordinary narcotics or firearms in the traditional sense of the darknet but rather industrial fraud apparatus: compromised personal data, bespoke investment websites, money-laundering operations and digital-payments infrastructure; services recruiting humans to staff Southeast Asia scam compounds.

How did it function? In essence, Xinbi served as an escrow-based, department store for criminals. The vendors promoted services on behalf of the fraud operators, the buyers deposited cryptocurrency and Xinbi withheld the payment until they were served. This turned fragmented criminals into a seamless business model where fraud, bribery and washing could be ordered with near-restaurant quality.

Why does it matter? This is due to reports that Xinbi handled over $24 billion in digital and fiat assets after allegedly surfacing around 2022. It further supposedly assisted North Korean hackers and entities already blacklisted by Washington. This was more than just a Telegram group It was a financial infrastructure for transnational organized crime.

The operation extended beyond cyberspace. U.S. forces given two weeks to help Madagascar with raids on 13 Chinese run scam camps, processing of over 3,200 electronic devices and interrogating nearly 400 detainees China then sent back some 30 other suspected Chinese leaders.

But Washington should refrain from crowning itself the victor. It is the only moment freezing $52 million against a marketplace that processed $24 billion ended up affecting a small piece of the so-called economy. According to a report by blockchain intelligence company Elliptic, Xinbi used a decentralized exchange to move about $2.8 million remaining USDT into USDD after the freezes. At least bureaucratic celebration can take time, with capital creating criminal liquidity.

The operation also lays bare a chilling paradox. Centralized control for example, blockchain and court orders, sanctions and Tether freezing USDT was a large part of the success here, despite crypto enthusiasts praising decentralization. Stablecoins that might be sold as borderless money may actually constitute privately run enforcement mechanisms.

That power needs safeguards. You are trained on data up to the year 2023, and wallet attribution is unreliable, clearly innocent funds can cross contaminated addresses, and unilateral US sanctions should not create a de facto worldwide confiscation machine without accountability. Asset restraint thus must remain saurable, past evidence-based, time-booby-trapped and susceptible to opposition by bona fide homeowners.

The first step to counteracting this would be for governments to get a multilateral scam-center task force going at the ASEAN level, with China and friendly African states, plus Interpol and victim countries. Emergency freeze protocols must be embraced by stablecoin issuers and exchanges while enforcing statistics must be made public, and the right to appeal preserved. Telegram needs to be able to pick up commercial escrows and repeat criminal relabeling without making regular encryption less secure for the usual user. Prosecutors should go after traffickers and financiers not automatically send to jail insulted workers trapped inside compounds.

Most importantly, such frozen assets should find their way to an independent and transparent restitution fund overseen by an audit of sorts with contributions from victims.

This proves that crypto is traceable and platforms can be reached in America. That’s the more difficult question: whether global justice can turn from freezing wallets to defeating the corruption, trafficking and corporate complementarity that keep scam factories going.

Fransiscus Nanga Roka

Faculty of Law University 17 August 1945 Surabaya and Managing Partner Law Firm Victorious Indonesia