The cryptocurrency transaction guarantee platform primarily provides transaction guarantee services for the black and grey industries in Southeast Asia. Its clients include entities related to illegal activities such as money laundering, payments, document verification, smuggling, and gambling, and it has become a powerful tool for organized cybercrime groups.
In addition to these regular crime types, some transaction guarantee platforms also engage in human trafficking activities under the guise of 'overseas labor'. This article aims to disclose the development trend of this inhumane crime industry and investigate its business scale and financial pollution based on cryptocurrency analysis.
Southeast Asian electric fraud slave trade
Southeast Asian electric fraud groups need to recruit employees of corresponding nationalities based on the target fraud groups. For example, in the case of 'Pig Butchering Scam' targeting Chinese groups, a large number of young Chinese individuals cross the border through legal or illegal channels each year to work in electric fraud parks.
A public group merchant is sharing how to deceive/kidnap young Chinese males
These young people are usually deceived or forced to enter Southeast Asia, and by the time they realize they have been sold as slaves in the electric fraud industry park, it is often too late to escape.
Price of the population by age group (in USDT)
Typically, only young males aged 20-30 are the most popular 'products', capable of fetching higher prices, while those under 20 or over 35 are considered 'scraps', either priced lower or requiring stricter scrutiny. Females are almost never included in the transaction range.
Earlier, the actor Wang Xing, who caused a huge public outcry in mainland China, was kidnapped through this channel and sold to an electric fraud park.
Strong pressure vehicle transaction guarantee service
In terms of regular black and grey market material transactions, the business logic of transaction guarantee platforms is similar to e-commerce platforms like Amazon and Taobao. Merchants need to pay a deposit to the platform before they can start business, and the total amount of transactions conducted at the same time cannot exceed the deposit limit. If a merchant cannot provide effective services or products for their own reasons, the buyer has the right to request platform arbitration and even obtain compensation from the deposit. Through this model, transaction guarantee platforms establish trust between the illegal trading parties.
Linghang Guarantee dedicated group strong pressure vehicle transaction rules
In terms of human trafficking, the basic model is also consistent. When transactions involve humans as the target, such merchants are referred to as 'labor transaction guarantee merchants'. However, due to the possibility of involuntary victims escaping (in the literal sense), calling the police, or refusing to cooperate at any time, some merchants may resort to intimidation, coercion, and physical violence during transport. Merchants providing these additional services are called 'strong pressure vehicle transaction guarantee merchants'.
Strong pressure, industry jargon, here refers to kidnapping.
Huiwang Group's Potato Guarantee emphasizes the 'bottom line'
Due to the global law enforcement crackdown on transnational human trafficking crimes, the vast majority of guarantee transaction platforms refuse to provide transaction guarantee services for human trafficking-related illegal transactions. Even the leading guarantee transaction platform 'Potato Guarantee' under Cambodia's Huiwang Group emphasizes the 'human bottom line' and claims it will not participate, indicating the severity of such businesses.
Analysis of deposit addresses on Linghang Guarantee dedicated group
Linghang Guarantee is the only one among the top ten transaction guarantee platforms in Southeast Asia that operates a public group and a private group for 'overseas labor' business, and explicitly states that it provides guarantee services for 'strong pressure vehicle transactions'.
Linghang Guarantee Channel Official Announcement
The pinned announcement in its official Telegram channel mentions that 'strong pressure vehicle guarantee merchants' under Linghang Guarantee must submit deposits via the dedicated group address, indicating that the counterparties of the publicized addresses all belong to entities related to transnational human trafficking in Southeast Asia.
Thanks to this, Bitrace investigators can carry out blockchain analysis.
Data from Bitrace Pro investigation tool
The latest deposit address of Linghang Guarantee dedicated group was activated on February 23, 2025, and within less than five months thereafter, a total of 100,748,05.56 USDT flowed in, worth over 100 million dollars.
It is worth noting that this batch of funds is merely the deposit submitted by merchants operating the 'strong pressure vehicle guarantee' business under Linghang Guarantee to the dedicated group address. Within the deposit range, merchants can repeatedly execute transactions, and the actual amount of funds related to transnational human trafficking in Southeast Asia far exceeds this figure.
Analysis of fund pollution from slave trade
By analyzing the funds of the counterparties of the Linghang Guarantee dedicated group address, Bitrace investigators attempt to assess the utilization situation of centralized trading platforms.
Entity Name
USDT Deposit to Linghang
Entity Name
USDT Withdraw From Linghang
OKX
71,050
OKX
1,449,300
HTX
1,362
HTX
156,513
-
-
Binance
66,819
-
-
Gate io
17,098
Data from Bitrace Pro investigation tool
Direction of fund sources: two exchanges transferred 18 transactions totaling 72,418 USDT to the audited party. These transactions mean that the Linghang Guarantee merchants directly used the exchange addresses to pay deposits to Linghang Guarantee, and these deposits were used to guarantee their human trafficking business.
Direction of fund withdrawal: 262 user addresses from the four exchanges received 414 transactions totaling 1,689,730 USDT from the audited party. These transactions mean that after stopping business, Linghang Guarantee merchants directly transferred the deposits returned by the platform to their exchange accounts.
Image captured from Bitrace Pro investigation tool
All four exchanges have a Chinese background, and their primary user base is Chinese-speaking users, which aligns with the business of Linghang Guarantee dedicated group merchants selling Chinese individuals to Southeast Asian electric fraud parks.
Among these, OKX, as one of the world's leading centralized cryptocurrency exchanges, has been heavily utilized for deposit payments and storage of criminal funds during this process, with 17.3% of deposit withdrawal activities from Linghang Guarantee dedicated group's addresses pointing to 236 OKX user addresses.
Guarantee fund threats
Illegal transaction guarantee platforms are often combined with anonymous social software and on-chain money laundering, posing a continuous and covert financial threat to cryptocurrency institutions.
Taking the most commonly used social software Telegram APP as an example, although many public group merchants disclose their business content and addresses in the channel, the truly dangerous illegal transactions are often hidden in non-public private groups or VIP groups, making them difficult to detect.
Frequent changes in business addresses also pose challenges for continuous monitoring. Besides the top guarantee transaction platforms maintaining relatively stable address rotations, other small and medium-sized guarantee platforms face issues of extensive address reuse, irregular changes, and overlapping business functions, which raises demands for rapid perception from risk control personnel.
Thus, not only do illegal transaction guarantee platforms for cryptocurrencies pose financial threats to centralized entities like exchanges, but also the funds related to organized crimes such as online gambling, money laundering, and fraud.
Written at the end
The crackdown on transnational human trafficking criminal entities in Southeast Asia relies not only on law enforcement activities by countries and regions around the world but also on the voluntary cooperation of operators in the cryptocurrency industry infrastructure—Cex, OTC, Crypto Payment, etc.
Bitrace has long maintained close cooperation with law enforcement agencies and regulatory authorities in multiple locations across Asia, deeply participating in the tracking and analysis of over a thousand virtual asset-related cases, accumulating rich practical experience and high-value risk data in the process. Based on this, Bitrace has built a high-quality risk address database covering over 20 mainstream and emerging public chains, and combined with self-developed AI models and large language model technology, continuously optimizes risk labeling, fund path identification, and address clustering capabilities, possessing the ability for rapid perception and intelligent analysis of complex on-chain money laundering and criminal activities.
Through Bitrace Pro, Bitrace Blacklist, and Bitrace AML tools, Bitrace can effectively meet the different needs of financial institutions, providing compliance experiences for operators and risk control personnel.