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Chinese-language Telegram groups have surpassed the dark web, creating the world’s largest illicit crypto economy. They now process tens of billions of dollars annually.
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These markets fuel a global fraud industry by selling scam tools and money laundering services. Their growth is supercharged by accessible AI deception software.
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The entire system operates in plain sight on a mainstream app using the stablecoin USDT (Tether). This makes it a resilient, frictionless alternative to the traditional dark web.
Chinese Telegram groups have turned into the biggest spot for illegal crypto activity. They’re bigger and more sophisticated than regular dark web places now.
New data shows these groups handle tons of money each year—we’re talking billions of dollars—by selling scam tools and money laundering all in plain sight. These actions fuel a huge fraud business that costs victims in the U.S. alone billions.
The Size of Telegram’s Secret Black Market
The numbers are pretty wild. Elliptic, a blockchain analytics and crypto compliance firm, says one group, Huione Guarantee, handled around $27 billion from 2021 to 2025. That’s more than all the big dark web markets ever did. Even when Telegram shut down Huione in May, things just moved somewhere else.
Now, two main groups, Tudou Guarantee and Xinbi Guarantee, are in charge. They shuffle almost $2 billion each month, which is more than what AlphaBay, that famous dark web market, ever got the entire time it was around. Security companies like Bitrace now track about 30 big Chinese markets on Telegram. It’s a tough and fluid ecosystem of crime.
Why Scammers Now Prefer Telegram to the Dark Web
Telegram didn’t become a scammer hangout by chance. While the traditional dark web remains a repository for all manner of illicit material, from controversial footage, as seen in the case of Chinese actor Yu Menglong’s death, to black markets, its features make it way easier to use than the dark web. You don’t need to be a tech whiz anymore; folks can find these scam shops with a simple search. No Tor needed. Telegram has public channels, reaches everywhere instantly, and keeps things private.
These scam shops have copied all the trust systems from the old dark web. Things like vendor ratings, holding funds in escrow, and systems for settling disputes. Tether (USDT) is the go-to for payments on these Telegram platforms because it keeps values stable in the chaotic underground economy.
If a scam group gets caught, they just switch names and are back pretty quickly, usually in a few weeks. It’s like a dark web that’s not even hidden; anyone can find it.
Feeding a Huge Pig Butchering Scam Industry
Unlike the old dark web markets that sold drugs, these Telegram groups mostly sell the tools to run scams. Their main customers run pig butchering scams – these are long-term romance or investment scams where they act like they’re in love or give out investment advice, build trust, and then rip people off.
Federal data says these scams pull in about $10 billion a year from Americans alone. These scam operations often run from places in Southeast Asia, using people who’ve been trafficked to work for them.
On Telegram, scammers can buy anything they need: fake investment sites, services for laundering money, stolen IDs, and telecom tools for tricking people. The scam economy and Telegram markets help each other grow in a vicious way.
Scams Powered by AI
AI has seriously boosted this criminal industry. Groups on Telegram that speak Chinese are now selling AI scam tools. The scale of it is unsettling; they’re openly hawking software that can do face swaps in real time, copying voices that sound real, and even making deepfake identity kits.
Basically, criminals can now pretend to be anyone on video calls. This makes people trust them more and makes the scams work better. Threat analysts say this is like mass producing scams — “the industrialization of social engineering,” as they call it. Scams aren’t just crude operations anymore but are run like a factory assembly line, using high-tech tools openly sold on a popular app.
Time to Take Action
So, what’s being done about all this? Not enough, right now. Even though the scale is massive, efforts to bring these criminals to face the law are not as one would like. However, major tech firms are increasingly taking the fight to court, as seen in recent cases like Google suing Chinese hackers and advocating for new legal frameworks to disrupt scam operations.
USDT (Tether) is the backbone of this whole setup financially. Even though the people who make Tether could freeze it, they hardly ever do it in these markets. So, the most controlled stablecoin is helping the biggest wild illegal scam market.
Telegram has taken down big scam shops before, but new ones always show up. The main issue is that it thrives because it’s easily accessible, uses a stable currency, and has high-tech systems. As crypto expert Jae Kwon said in a post on X, all the talents that could be used for good are instead being used to rip off new crypto users.
Unless platforms, stablecoin companies, and law enforcement around the world work together, this dark system will probably keep growing. The new dark web isn’t hiding; it’s on the app you might use every day.
