The tech companies have delisted apps developed by a Cambodian company accused of running a multi-billion dollar market for illicit fraud services on Telegram.
For the last few months, Apple and Google’s app stores hosted apps developed by Huione Group, a Cambodia-based company that was accused of running the biggest ever dark web market on Tuesday.
According to crypto crime trackers Elliptic and Chainalysis, Huione Group is behind Huione Guarantee, a Telegram-based market for money laundering services and other tools aimed at supporting fraudsters. Elliptic said on Tuesday as much as $24 billion in sales had gone through the platform, making it “the largest illicit online marketplace to have ever operated.” It is larger than more infamous drug markets like Silk Road and Hydra; with $5 billion in sales, the latter is the second best-performing illegal bazaar, Elliptic wrote.
Alongside the Guarantee marketplace, Huione Group is also running a number of other services, including a payment app, a crypto exchange and a mobile messaging service. It’s unclear whether any of them have been used to commit fraud. As noted by Chainalysis, Huione Group has also offered numerous legitimate products, from insurance to luxury travel.
“I think Google and Apple should consider whether Huione Group is an appropriate business to be distributing apps through their platforms,” Elliptic CEO Tom Robinson told Forbes.
When reached for comment, Google removed all of the apps, as confirmed by a spokesperson on Tuesday. As of Wednesday, Apple had taken down the crypto exchange and declined to comment. The other Huione Group apps are still listed on the App Store as of publication.
Neither Telegram nor Huione Group had responded to requests for comment at the time of publication.
The Guarantee marketplace consists of a vast network of thousands of Telegram channels, each run by a different merchant, many pushing fraud-related products, according to Elliptic and Chainalysis. “Our researchers identified thousands of vendors on the platform, offering money laundering services, stolen personal data, technology and other items necessary to conduct online fraud on an industrial scale,” Elliptic wrote in its Tuesday report.
Huione Guarantee acts as a kind of guarantor or escrow provider, taking a fee for each transaction. It claims to be neutral and has written in disclaimers on Chinese-language websites that it does not know what its users are selling.
Per Elliptic’s research, users of Huione Guarantee offer a wide array of products to support fraud, in particular pig butchering, where victims are tricked into investing in a fake crypto platform that promises big returns but never pays out. It found one seller offering electrified shackles to be used on scam center workers, many of whom are trafficked into the country, according to previous reports.
“The marketplace appears to be a key enabler of transnational organized crime groups that are perpetrating scams against victims around the world,” Elliptic added.
This story was originally published on forbes.com and all figures are in USD.
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