Cryptocurrency trading guarantee platforms are matchmaking and intermediary platforms that mainly provide trading guarantee services for Southeast Asian black and gray industries. Their service objects include entities related to illegal activities such as money laundering, payment, file checking, smuggling, and gambling. At present, they have become a powerful tool for cybercrime groups.
In addition to these conventional crime types, some trading guarantee platforms also carry out human trafficking activities in the name of "overseas labor services". This article aims to disclose the development trend of this anti-human crime industry and investigate its business scale and capital pollution based on cryptocurrency analysis.
Southeast Asian telecom fraud groups need to recruit employees of corresponding nationalities according to the target groups of fraud. Taking the "Pig Butchering Scam" fraud targeting the Chinese community as an example, every year a large number of young Chinese people cross the border through legal or illegal channels to work in the telecom fraud park.
A business in a public group is sharing how to deceive/kidnap young Chinese men
These young people are usually deceived and forced to enter Southeast Asia. When they realize that they have been sold as slave laborers in the electronic fraud industrial park, it is often too late to escape.
Prices of population in different age groups (in USDT)
Usually only young men aged 20-30 are the most popular "commodities" and can be sold at higher prices. Those under 20 and over 35 are considered "scraps" and either have lower prices or require stricter assessments. Women are almost not included in the transaction range.
The kidnapping of actor Wang Xing, which had caused great public opinion in mainland China earlier, was sold to the electronic fraud park through this channel.
In terms of conventional black and gray product material transactions. The business logic of the transaction guarantee platform is similar to that of e-commerce platforms such as Amazon and Taobao. Merchants need to pay a deposit to the platform before they can conduct business, and the total amount of business conducted at the same time cannot exceed the deposit limit. If the merchant is unable to provide effective services or goods due to its own reasons, the buyer will have the right to apply for platform arbitration and even obtain compensation from the deposit. Through this model, the transaction guarantee platform has established trust between the two parties of the illegal transaction.
Linghang Guarantee Group Strong Pressure Car Guarantee Transaction Rules
In terms of human trafficking. The basic model is also the same. When humans are traded as the subject matter, such merchants are called "labor transaction guarantee merchants." However, since involuntary victims may jump out of the car (literally), call the police, and refuse to cooperate at any time, some merchants will intimidate, coerce, and beat them during transportation. Guarantee merchants who provide such additional services are called "Strong Pressure Car Transaction Guarantee Merchants."
Strong pressure, a jargon in the industry, refers to kidnapping here.
Tudou Guarantee, a subsidiary of Huiwang Group, emphasizes "bottom line"
Due to the crackdown on transnational human trafficking crimes by law enforcement agencies around the world, most guarantee trading platforms refuse to provide transaction guarantee services for illegal transactions such as human trafficking. Even Tudou Guarantee, the absolute leading guarantee trading platform under Cambodia Huiwang Group, also emphasized the "bottom line of humanity" and claimed that it would not participate, which shows how vicious this type of business is.
Linghang Guarantee is the only one among the top ten transaction guarantee platforms in Southeast Asia that operates the public group (Public Group) and private group (Private Group) business of "overseas labor services", and has clearly stated that it provides guarantee services for "pressure vehicle transactions".
Official announcement of Linghang Guarantee Channel
The top announcement of its official Telegram channel mentioned that the "strong pressure vehicle guarantee merchants" under Linghang Guarantee need to submit a deposit through a special group deposit address, which indicates that the counterparties of the public address are all related to entities in the transnational human trafficking industry in Southeast Asia.
Thanks to this, Bitrace's investigators were able to conduct blockchain analysis.
Data from Bitrace Pro Investigation Tool
The latest special group deposit address of Pilot Guarantee was activated on February 23, 2025, and in less than 5 months, a total of 10,074,805.56 USDT flowed in, with a value of more than 10 million US dollars.
It is worth noting that this batch of funds is only the deposit submitted by merchants under Pilot Guarantee who only operate the "Strong Pressure Vehicle Guarantee" business to the special group address. Within the deposit range, merchants can repeat the business. The actual amount of funds related to transnational human trafficking in Southeast Asia far exceeds this figure.
By analyzing the funds of the counterparties of the Pilot Guarantee Group address, Bitrace investigators attempted to assess the exploitation of centralized trading platforms.
Data from Bitrace Pro investigation tool
In terms of source of funds, the two exchanges transferred a total of 72,418 USDT to the audited objects in 18 transactions. The meaning of these transactions is that the merchants of Leading Guarantee directly used the exchange addresses to pay deposits to Leading Guarantee, and these deposits were used to guarantee their human trafficking business;
In terms of fund withdrawal, 262 user addresses of the four exchanges received 414 transactions totaling 1,689,730 from the audited objects. USDT, the meaning of these transactions is that after the Linghang Guarantee merchants stopped their business, they directly transferred the deposits returned by the platform to the exchange accounts.
The picture is taken from the Bitrace Pro investigation tool
These four exchanges are all Chinese-based, and the main user groups are Chinese-speaking users, which is consistent with the business of Linghang Guarantee's special group merchants mainly selling Chinese people to Southeast Asian electronic fraud parks.
Among them, OKX, as one of the world's leading centralized cryptocurrency exchanges, was the first to be affected in this process and was widely used for deposit payments and criminal fund storage. 17.3% of the withdrawal activities of the pilot guarantee group's deposit addresses were directed to 236 OKX user addresses.
Illegal transaction guarantee platforms are often combined with anonymous social software and on-chain money laundering, thus posing a continuous and hidden financial threat to crypto institutions.
Take the most commonly used social software Telegram APP as an example. Although a large number of public group merchants will disclose their business content and business addresses in the channel, the truly dangerous illegal transactions are often hidden in non-public special groups or VIP groups, which are difficult to detect;
Frequently changing business addresses also pose a challenge to continuous monitoring. In addition to the head transaction guarantee platform, which will maintain a relatively stable rotation of business addresses, other small and medium-sized guarantee platforms have a large number of mixed business addresses, irregular replacement, and overlapping business functions, which requires the rapid perception of risk control personnel.
Therefore, not only the illegal cryptocurrency transaction guarantee platform, but also the funds related to organized crimes such as online gambling, money laundering, and fraud will pose a financial threat to centralized entities such as exchanges.
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