Despite being flagged by U.S. regulators as a top money laundering concern, wallets tied to the controversial Huione Group continued moving hundreds of millions of dollars through major crypto exchanges, according to new research from blockchain analytics firm Global Ledger.
The report reveals that from May 1 to June 17, wallets linked to Huione handled over $10 billion worth of Tether’s USDT on Tron and another $219 million on Ethereum. Of that, nearly $943 million ended up on centralized exchanges (CEXs).
This activity comes just weeks after the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) named Huione a “primary money laundering concern” under the PATRIOT Act. The designation was supposed to shut the door on U.S. financial institutions doing business with the group, which is registered in Hong Kong but operates largely out of Cambodia.
Yet Global Ledger’s Yury Serov says Huione-linked funds are still finding their way into major exchanges, even if the route is a bit more roundabout.
One twist was that while FinCEN targeted Huione’s operations in Cambodia, the group also has a registered crypto exchange in Poland. According to corporate records, Huione Crypto is still active on the Polish business register, despite claims of a wind-down.
Serov says the Poland entity is not some rogue spin-off but clearly part of the same broader operation. “The wallet infrastructure is deeply intertwined. You can’t separate the Polish VASP from the rest of the group.”
FinCEN’s original designation cited Huione’s links to a sprawling network of illicit services, including Telegram-based dark markets and payments platforms suspected of helping groups like North Korea’s Lazarus launder funds. One such platform—Huione Guarantee—was believed to be one of the largest darknet-style operations ever, with over $24 billion in activity before it said it would shut down in May.
Still Online, Just Rebranded
Some Huione-linked sites and channels have gone dark, but others simply resurfaced under new names. For instance, a site called Super-exchange.co displays a notice that crypto services were “suspended” as of June 30. In practice, though, the site remains operational.
Meanwhile, Huione Guarantee quietly handed off users to a spinoff marketplace called Tudou, where Huione reportedly owns a 30% stake. Global Ledger and Chainalysis both say transaction volumes around Huione’s ecosystem remained active even after FinCEN’s designation.
Elliptic sees it differently. The firm claims that Huione Guarantee’s wallet activity has all but stopped, and warns against lumping it together with other Huione operations like Huione Pay, which still moves a lot of money but through different channels.
“The mistake is in treating all Huione subsidiaries as one,” Elliptic said. “Guarantee and Pay were doing very different things with different infrastructure.”
Huione isn’t the first dark market to be taken offline—nor the first to bounce back. After Hydra Market was sanctioned and shut down in 2022, new marketplaces popped up almost immediately. The same thing is now happening with Huione.
And it’s not just marketplaces. Garantex, a Russian exchange sanctioned by both the U.S. and EU, simply rebranded as Grinex and kept doing business. Even crypto swapping services like eXch returned under stealth operations after their takedowns.
