Written by Bitrace
The cryptocurrency transaction guarantee platform is a matchmaking and intermediary platform that mainly provides transaction guarantee services for the black and gray industries in Southeast Asia. Its service objects include entities related to illegal activities such as money laundering, payment, file checking, smuggling, gambling, etc. It has now 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". 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 Asia’s online fraud and slave labor trade
Southeast Asian fraud groups need to recruit employees of corresponding nationalities according to the target groups. Take 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 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 cyber fraud industrial park, it is often too late to escape.
Population prices of different age groups (in USDT)
Usually only young men between 20 and 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 previously caused huge public opinion in mainland China, involved Wang Xing himself being sold to an online fraud park through this channel.
Strong pressure vehicle transaction guarantee service
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.
Pilot Guarantee Group Strong Pressure Vehicle Guarantee Transaction Rules
In terms of human trafficking, the basic model is the same. When humans are used as the subject of a transaction, such merchants are called "labor transaction guarantee merchants." However, since the involuntary victims may jump out of the vehicle (literally), call the police, or refuse to cooperate at any time, some merchants will intimidate, coerce, and beat them during the transportation process. The guarantee merchants who provide such additional services are called "forced vehicle transaction guarantee merchants."
Coercion is a jargon in the industry, and here it refers to kidnapping.
Tudou Guarantee, a subsidiary of Huiwang Group, emphasizes "bottom line"
Due to the crackdown on transnational human trafficking by law enforcement agencies around the world, most guarantee trading platforms refuse to provide transaction guarantee services for illegal human trafficking transactions. Even Tudou Guarantee, the absolute leading guarantee trading platform under Cambodia Huiwang Group, emphasized the "human bottom line" and claimed that it would not participate, which shows how vicious this type of business is.
Analysis of the pledge address of the Linghang Guarantee Group
Among the top ten transaction guarantee platforms in Southeast Asia, Linghang Guarantee is the only one that operates the public group and private group business of "overseas labor services", and has clearly stated that it provides guarantee services for "pressure vehicle transactions".
Official announcement of the Pilot Guarantee Channel
The pinned announcement on its official Telegram channel mentioned that "high-pressure vehicle guarantee merchants" under Linghang Guarantee need to submit a deposit through a dedicated group deposit address, which indicates that the counterparties of the public addresses are all entities related to the transnational human trafficking industry in Southeast Asia.
Thanks to this, Bitrace investigators were able to conduct blockchain analysis.
Data from Bitrace Pro investigation tool
The latest dedicated group staking address of Leading Guarantee was activated on February 23, 2025. 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 merely the deposit submitted by merchants under Leading Guarantee who only operate the "high-pressure vehicle guarantee" business to a special group address. Within the deposit range, merchants can repeatedly perform business. The actual amount of funds related to transnational human trafficking in Southeast Asia far exceeds this figure.
Analysis of the pollution of funds from slave labor trade
By analyzing the funds of the counterparties of the Pilot Guarantee Group addresses, Bitrace investigators attempted to assess the exploitation of centralized trading platforms.
Data from Bitrace Pro investigation tool
In terms of the source of funds, the two exchanges transferred 18 transactions totaling 72,418 USDT to the audited object. The meaning of these transactions is that the merchants of Pilot Guarantee directly used the exchange addresses to pay deposits to Pilot 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 USDT from the audited objects. The meaning of these transactions is that after the Leading Guarantee merchants stopped their business, they directly transferred the deposits returned by the platform to the exchange accounts.
Image taken from Bitrace Pro investigation tool
These four exchanges all have Chinese backgrounds, and their main user groups are Chinese-speaking users, which is consistent with the business of Leading Guarantee’s special group merchants mainly trafficking Chinese people to Southeast Asian electronic fraud parks.
Among them, OKX, as one of the world's leading centralized cryptocurrency exchanges, has been the first to be hit in this process and has been widely used for deposit payments and storage of criminal funds. 17.3% of the withdrawal activities of the deposit addresses of the Leading Guarantee Group were directed to 236 OKX user addresses.
Security funding threats
Illegal transaction guarantee platforms are often combined with anonymous social software and on-chain money laundering, thus posing a continuous and covert financial threat to crypto institutions.
Taking 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 address in the channel, the truly dangerous illegal transactions are often hidden in non-public special groups or VIP groups, which are difficult to detect;
Frequent changes in business addresses also pose a challenge to continuous monitoring. Except for the leading transaction guarantee platforms that maintain a relatively stable rotation of business addresses, other small and medium-sized guarantee platforms have a large number of mixed business addresses, irregular replacements, and overlapping business functions, which puts forward requirements for risk control personnel to perceive quickly.
Therefore, not only the illegal cryptocurrency transaction guarantee platforms, but also funds related to organized crimes such as online gambling, money laundering, and fraud will pose a financial threat to centralized entities such as exchanges.
