Huione: the company behind the largest ever illicit online marketplace has launched a stablecoin
In July 2024, Elliptic exposed Huione Guarantee as a multi-billion dollar marketplace for online fraudsters, including those responsible for so-called pig butchering scams. The chinese-language market is part of Huione Group, a Cambodian conglomerate with links to the country’s ruling Hun family.
Our researchers identified thousands of vendors on the platform, offering money laundering services, stolen personal data, technology and other items necessary to conduct online fraud on an industrial scale. We even found electrified shackles intended for use on scam compound workers, many of whom are trafficked into the country. The marketplace appears to be a key enabler of transnational organized crime groups that are perpetrating scams against victims around the world.
Following the publication of our research, Huione Guarantee has tried to distance itself from Huione Group. For example the marketplace recently renamed itself to “Haowang Guarantee”1. Huione Group’s payments business, Huione Pay also removed a section on its website dedicated to the marketplace and describing Huione Guarantee as a subsidiary. Despite this distancing, Huione Guarantee confirmed that Huione Group remains a “strategic partner and shareholder”.
