Xinbi’s Crackdown Must End With Victims Getting Paid -By Fransiscus Nanga Roka

Things have come to the point that by now cybercrime has a procurement department. An illegal marketplace of high-end resources designed to facilitate human trafficking makes it easier to coordinate exploiter activity criminal operators can buy phony investment websites, money laundering services and recruitment support from these services.

Read More ANI; ‘Iran scales back nuclear programme commitment’ On 9 September 2026, the US Department of Justice’s organised crime unit announced it had carried out operations against Xinbi Guarantee and its affiliates globally Stroomsin.com The Washington court was empowered to allow for seizure of Telegram channels; investigators seized two wallets for respectively $12 million and coordinated restrain out across the network more than $52 million. This was not a proof of a collapse but it is a significant disruption to the entire enterprise.

At the same time, the Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Xinbi and two companies from Singapore SafeW Technology and Cambodia Anwen Technology, that it said helped support its work. Since roughly 2022, Xinbi has processed more than $24 billion in digital assets and fiat currency, the Treasury says. That number only describes marketplace throughput; it is misleading to present it as a legally determined sum of stolen funds.

Business modelThe escrow mechanism that Xinbi claims to rely on It retained payments until services were completed by vendors, assuring criminal purchasers that their suppliers would follow through with providing the goods. The DOJ cited “laundering the proceeds of fraud, creating fake investment webpages and soliciting trafficking victims for scam compounds” among the services advertised. Institutionalized trust between criminals but a genocide of trust among ordinary people.

The operation also demonstrated how spatial dislocation can be perilous. The DOJ said its team contributed for two weeks in supporting authorities in Madagascar to take action against 13 scam centers, processing over 3,200 electronic devices. Almost 400 had been arrested, around thirty of whom were identified as compound leaders from China and repatriated there. Such operations have a more regional charge but do not necessarily establish that Xinbi ran every compound raided.

The hard lesson is that closing a marketplace does not destroy customer demand: it just disperses the users across other platforms. According to Treasury, Xinbi had already started moving networks onto SafeW around June 2025 and even released the xinbiPay wallet created by Anwen. Instead of celebrating every closure as the final verdict of a winner and loser, enforcement needs to be preempting emerging replacement platforms.

Governments should create permanent joint investigations linking financial intelligence, trafficking evidence, corporate ownership and digital infrastructure. Repression will follow the organizers, brokers and protectors not just the wallets that offer the lowest freezing resistance.

Technology firms require procedures for responding to confirmed criminal behaviour and evidence preservation, as well as compliance with law enforcement requests, more quickly. While prisons, jail time, and probation follow from a criminal act, you should be accountable for what you do/allow to facilitate rather than treating encryption itself as its own crime.

Banks, exchanges and stablecoin issuance service providers should ramp up coordination to support fraud alerts and asset-preservation requests alongside orders protecting the legal rights of the target entity through review mechanisms for unfounded restrictions. Frozen funds are still in litigation; they do not curt off compensation by default.

But first and foremost, authorities should separate abusers from victims who are forced to carry out scams. Arrest numbers do not substitute for individualized trafficking evaluations, legal counsel, safe housing and protection against unsafe repatriation.

Finally, a recovery plan must be published by prosecutors: Seized assets, forfeited funds, verified and returned claims of money. These cross-border arrangements should compensate not only defrauded savers, but also trafficking survivors, with clear administration and independent oversight.

A seized channel is an enforcement result Compensation for the loss of livelihood is a legal remedy.

Xinbi’s disruption deserves recognition. But then the governments have to win the test of those who get called “victory” by not allowing replacement networks, bringing perpetrators to trial properly and repaying recoverable wealth back to whomever suffered to generate that business.

Fransiscus Nanga Roka

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