The U.S. Treasury’s financial crimes arm has proposed removing the Huione Group, a Cambodia-based financial conglomerate, from the US financial system for its alleged involvement in Lazarus-linked crypto laundering.
The FinCEN announced on Thursday that the Group serves as a “critical node for laundering proceeds of cyber heists” carried out by the infamous North Korean Lazarus Group.
The North Korea-linked Cambodian marketplace has fraudulently obtained billions of dollars from US citizens through romance scams since August 2021.
“Given the money laundering risk posed by Huione Group, FinCEN is proposing to prohibit U.S. financial institutions from opening or maintaining correspondent or payable-through accounts for or on behalf of Huione Group,” the announcement read.
Huione Promoted Fraudulent Investments, ‘Pig Butchering’ Schemes
Federal authorities noted that the online marketplace facilitated bad actors to defraud people through social media texts. Further, Huione helped in running “pig butchering” investment scams, the announcement read.
The Group has become a “marketplace of choice” for malicious cyber actors, said Scott Bessent, Secretary of the Treasury.
“Today’s proposed action will sever Huione Group’s access to correspondent banking, degrading these groups’ ability to launder their ill-gotten gains,” he added. Treasury remains committed to disrupting any attempt by malicious cyber actors to secure revenue from or for their criminal schemes.”
Over $4 Billion Accumulated From Romance, Investment Fraud
Per the FinCEN report, the online marketplace has been selling items useful for carrying out cyber scams, to payment services in fiat currency. They frequently used for money laundering and even recently developed stablecoin, it added.
“FinCEN’s investigation identified that, in aggregate, Huione Group laundered at least $4 billion worth of illicit proceeds between August 2021 and January 2025.”
From the $4 billion accumulated, at least $37 million worth of convertible crypto stemmed from the North Korean cyber heists. Besides, $36 million came from crypto investment scams, and $300 million worth of digital assets from other cyber scams.
Per a research from Elliptic last year, the platform had already facilitated transactions exceeding $11 billion through online scams in Southeast Asia. Using blockchain analytics, the Elliptic research team was able to quantify the cryptocurrency transactions on the Huione marketplace.
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