PRC Extradites Huione Group Gangster Tied to Pig Butchering Scams
- April 3, 2026
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- 3 min read
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Li Xiong, past chairman of the Huione Group, was extradited from Cambodia to China last week, in another blow towards organized crime in Southeast Asia focused on generating revenue from fraud schemes. The Huione Group was a corporate network of companies that enabled money laundering on a massive scale for scam centers in Southeast Asia involved in “pig butchering” and other forms of scams as well as money earned by North Korean state-sponsored hacking operations.
Xiong’s arrest follows by several months, the detention and extradition to China of Chen Zhi, the head of Prince Group, which operated the Huione Group of companies. China’s state broadcaster CCTV aired footage of Li Xiong, 41, shaven-headed and in handcuffs, arriving by plane to China, according to reports in regional media.
Huione Group ran world’s largest illicit marketplace
The Huione Group processed over $89 billion in crypto assets through what researchers belonging to the blockchain forensics company Elliptic described as the largest illicit online marketplace, called Huione Guarantee, ever identified. According to an expose of the marketplace, thousands of vendors on the platform offering money laundering services, stole personal data, and other items necessary to conduct fraud on an industrial scale were identified.
Subsequent to the publication of the expose, the illicit marketplace rebranded itself as “Haowang Guarantee.” However, ownership ties with the Huione Group were not severed. The Telegram-based marketplace at its peak exceeded in volume several times over the size of comparable darknet marketplaces, such as Hydra and Kraken.
The U.S. Treasury Department‘s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) severed all ties between the Huione Group and the U.S. financial system in October 2025. This occurred after FinCEN named the Cambodia-based conglomerate as “a financial institution of primary money laundering concern” in May of the same year.
Criminals prefer stablecoins like USDT
According to blockchain intelligence firm Nominis, over time, the Huione Guarantee marketplace “evolved into a central coordination and settlement layer for cyber enabled crime, particularly scams, fraud operations, and money laundering services.” The platform functioned by connecting merchants, service providers, and buyers through thousands of Telegram channels, with Huione Guarantee acting as the trusted intermediary that held and released funds, almost exclusively using USDT stablecoins.
The use of stablecoins by criminals is interesting and notable. In 2025, illicit entities received approximately $141 billion via stablecoin wallets, according to blockchain intelligence platform TRM Labs, with the majority of this activity concentrated in financial crimes such as sanctions evasion and large-scale money laundering. Although, TRM Labs emphasized its report that before the money laundering phase, in crimes such as scams, criminals may prefer non-stablecoin crypto for transactions to then later convert to stablecoins in the money laundering phase.
