The United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office has announced a suite of sanctions targeting an illicit cryptocurrency marketplace in Southeast Asia.
The Xinbi marketplace provides a range of services to scam centres, including selling stolen data and providing satellite internet equipment.
The sanctions are designed to isolate Xinbi from legitimate crypto ecosystems by affecting its ability to make transactions. A similar marketplace, BYEX, closed operations following similar sanctions enacted in 2025.
“Our sanctions today send a clear message: We will not allow British people to become victims of these dreadful scams or tolerate the awful human rights abuses perpetrated in these scam centres,” Minister of State for Europe, North America and Overseas Territories, Stephen Doughty said in a March 26 statement.
“We must keep up the pressure on dirty money and those who benefit from it. At the Illicit Finance Summit in June, the UK will drive international action to tackle the ways in which ill-gotten profits are laundered and moved around the world.”
The UK is the first nation to sanction Xinbi, which it says supports a scam centre known as “#8 Par,” which is thought to be the largest in Cambodia. The centre is allegedly capable of accommodating at least 20,000 scam workers, most of whom have been trafficked under the pretence of legitimate jobs and now find themselves “trapped and forced to carry out online fraud under the threat of torture”.
Several individuals and one other entity were also targeted by sanctions:
Legend Innovation Co.: the operator of #8 Park
- Thet Li: a key lieutenant in the Prince Group, which was sanctioned by the US & UK last year
- Hu Xiaowei: a long-term associate of Prince Group management
- Several properties in London have been seized as part of the sanctions.
“Fraud is a global crime run by organised networks operating across borders and targeting victims at scale. That is why we are acting both at home and abroad,” Lord Hanson, the UK’s Fraud Minister, said.
“Actions like these sanctions and working with international partners through the recently launched UK-backed INTERPOL Global Fraud Taskforce demonstrate our commitment to protect the public and disrupt criminals worldwide.”
Blockchain analysis firm said the move bolsters "the UK’s leadership role in combating crypto-enabled fraud by using targeted financial sanctions to disrupt the rails and marketplaces that enable large-scale scams".
"Notably, the FCDO issued the Xinbi designation under its Global Human Rights regime, citing Xinbi’s material support for entities that processed funds for scam centers, which have been reported to routinely perpetrate torture and other grave human rights abuses against operators and victims alike," Chainalysis said.
"The concurrent targeting of #8 Park and its operators further reflects the UK’s commitment to pursuing accountability across the full gamut of scam infrastructure: from the physical compounds where victims are forcibly held to the digital marketplaces that supply and sustain them."
David Hollingworth
David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.