The UK government has imposed new sanctions targeting a cryptocurrency-enabled marketplace and individuals linked to large-scale scam operations across Southeast Asia, stepping up efforts to combat online fraud and human rights abuses.

The measures, announced Thursday by the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office and Home Office, focus on Xinbi, a Chinese-language illicit marketplace that the government said provides crypto-based services to fraud networks. Authorities said Xinbi enables the sale of stolen personal data and facilitates services used to target victims, including communications tools such as satellite internet equipment.

According to blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis, Xinbi processed more than $19.9 billion in transactions between 2021 and 2025, underscoring its role in facilitating money laundering, unlicensed OTC trades, and other illicit activity.

Across the region, scam centres have used schemes such as fake romantic relationships to defraud victims at scale, including in the UK. Officials said many of those carrying out the scams are themselves victims of trafficking, lured by false job offers and forced to conduct fraud under the threat of torture.

Targeting the financial backbone of scam networks

The UK said it is the first country to sanction Xinbi, aiming to isolate it from the legitimate crypto ecosystem and disrupt its ability to process transactions.

The sanctions also target Legend Innovation Co., the operator of "#8 Park," a major scam compound in Cambodia believed to house up to 20,000 trafficked workers, along with its director Eang Soklim, and individuals linked to the Prince Group’s financial network, previously sanctioned by the UK and U.S. last year. That earlier action led to asset freezes and seizures exceeding £1 billion ($1.3 billion) and contributed to a wave of investigations and arrests across the region.

Officials said the latest measures will have an immediate effect, further restricting access to financial channels used by the network. Several London properties will also be frozen, adding to previously seized UK assets, including a £100 million ($133 million) office block, two multi-million-pound mansions, and a helicopter.

"Our sanctions today send a clear message: We will not allow British people to become victims of these dreadful scams or tolerate the awful human rights abuses perpetrated in these scam centres," Stephen Doughty MP, the UK's Minister of State for Europe, North America and Overseas Territories, said.

The UK government said the action reflects a broader strategy to target not only individual perpetrators but also the infrastructure underpinning global scam operations. It comes ahead of the UK's Illicit Finance Summit in June, where officials plan to push for greater international coordination to tackle the laundering and movement of illicit funds across borders.