Southeast Asian Cryptocurrency-Driven Human Trafficking and Forced Labor Industry: Coercive Vehicle Trading and Escrow Platforms
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Southeast Asian Cryptocurrency-Driven Human Trafficking and Forced Labor Industry: Coercive Vehicle Trading and Escrow Platforms
The business logic of the transaction escrow platform is similar to that of e-commerce platforms such as Amazon and Taobao, where merchants need to pay a deposit to the platform before they can start doing business.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Bitrace
Cryptocurrency transaction escrow platforms primarily serve Southeast Asian cybercriminal and illicit operations by acting as intermediaries and facilitators. Their clients include entities involved in money laundering, illegal payments, data theft, smuggling, gambling, and other unlawful activities, making these platforms powerful tools for organized cybercrime groups.
Beyond these conventional criminal services, some escrow platforms operate under the guise of "overseas labor" to conduct human trafficking. This article aims to expose this inhumane criminal industry, analyze its development trends, and investigate its operational scale and financial contamination through cryptocurrency forensics.
Human Trafficking for Southeast Asian Scam Compounds
Southeast Asian telecom fraud syndicates recruit personnel based on the nationality of their intended victims. For example, in the case of "Pig Butchering Scams" targeting Chinese-speaking populations, large numbers of young Chinese individuals cross borders—legally or illegally—each year to work in scam compounds.
A merchant in a public group sharing tactics on deceiving/abducting young Chinese men
These youths are often deceived or coerced into entering Southeast Asia. By the time they realize they’ve been sold into forced labor at scam compounds, escape is usually no longer an option.
Prices of human trafficking victims by age group (in USDT)
Typically, males aged 20–30 are the most sought-after "commodities" and command higher prices. Those under 20 or over 35 are considered "scraps," either priced lower or subjected to stricter screening. Women are almost entirely excluded from such transactions.
The earlier high-profile abduction case of actor Wang Xing, which sparked widespread outrage in mainland China, involved exactly this trafficking route to a scam compound.
Forced Transport ("Qiang Ya Che") Escrow Services
In standard black-market commodity trading, the business model of escrow platforms resembles that of e-commerce platforms like Amazon or Taobao. Merchants must first deposit a bond with the platform before conducting business, and the total value of concurrent transactions cannot exceed the bond limit. If a merchant fails to deliver goods or services due to their own fault, buyers may file for arbitration and even claim compensation from the bond. This mechanism establishes trust between illicit trading parties.
Linghang Guarantee’s private group rules for forced transport escrow services
In human trafficking, the model remains consistent. When humans become the traded commodity, such merchants are referred to as "labor-related escrow merchants." However, because unwilling victims may attempt to escape (literally jump out of vehicles), report to authorities, or resist cooperation, some merchants use intimidation, coercion, or physical violence during transportation. Escrow providers offering these additional services are known as "forced transport escrow merchants."
"Qiang Ya" (强压), underworld jargon, here means kidnapping.
Tudou Guarantee, under Huwang Group, emphasizes its "moral底线"
Due to global law enforcement crackdowns on transnational human trafficking, the vast majority of escrow platforms refuse to provide guarantees for human trafficking deals. Even Tudou Guarantee—the dominant player among Cambodia-based Huwang Group—publicly stresses its "human moral底线" and claims non-involvement, highlighting how heinous this trade is considered even within criminal circles.
Analysis of Linghang Guarantee's Private Group Deposit Addresses
Linghang Guarantee is the only one among Southeast Asia’s top ten escrow platforms openly operating both public and private Telegram groups for "overseas labor" services, explicitly offering escrow support for "forced transport transactions."
Official announcement from Linghang Guarantee’s Telegram channel
The pinned message on its official Telegram channel states that merchants providing "forced transport escrow" services must submit deposits via a designated private group address. This indicates that all counterparties interacting with this address are linked to transnational human trafficking networks in Southeast Asia.
This transparency enables blockchain analysis by investigators.
Data sourced from Bitrace Pro investigation tool
Linghang Guarantee activated its latest private group deposit address on February 23, 2025. Within less than five months, it received a total inflow of 10,074,805.56 USDT—over $10 million USD.
Notably, this amount represents only the bond deposits submitted by merchants specializing in "forced transport escrow" services. Since merchants can reuse their bonds across multiple transactions, the actual volume of funds tied to transnational human trafficking far exceeds this figure.
Financial Contamination Analysis of Slave Labor Trade
By analyzing the counterparties of Linghang Guarantee’s private group deposit address, Bitrace investigators assessed the extent to which centralized exchanges have been exploited.
Data sourced from Bitrace Pro investigation tool
On the funding source side, two exchanges sent a total of 18 transactions amounting to 72,418 USDT to the audited address. These transactions indicate that Linghang merchants directly used exchange-linked addresses to pay their escrow deposits—funds used to back their human trafficking operations.
On the withdrawal side, 262 user addresses from four exchanges received 414 withdrawals totaling 1,689,730 USDT from the audited address. These represent cases where merchants transferred refunded deposits back into their exchange accounts after terminating operations.
Screenshot from Bitrace Pro investigation tool
All four exchanges have strong ties to Chinese-speaking communities and primarily serve Mandarin-speaking users—a perfect match with Linghang’s focus on trafficking Chinese nationals into Southeast Asian scam compounds.
Among them, OKX—one of the world’s largest centralized crypto exchanges—has been heavily exploited for both deposit payments and storage of criminal proceeds. A staggering 17.3% of withdrawals from Linghang’s private group deposit address were sent to 236 distinct OKX user addresses.
Funding Threat from Escrow Platforms
Illicit transaction escrow platforms often integrate with anonymous messaging apps and on-chain money laundering techniques, posing persistent and covert financial threats to cryptocurrency institutions.
Take Telegram, the most widely used messaging app: while many public group merchants openly advertise their services and wallet addresses in channels, the most dangerous illegal transactions typically occur within closed private or VIP groups, making detection extremely difficult.
Frequent rotation of operational addresses further complicates continuous monitoring. While leading escrow platforms maintain relatively stable address rotation patterns, smaller and mid-tier platforms often mix addresses unpredictably, change them without rules, and overlap functions—posing significant challenges for risk control teams trying to detect illicit activity quickly.
Therefore, not just illegal escrow platforms, but also organized crimes such as online gambling, money laundering, and fraud pose serious financial contamination risks to centralized entities like exchanges.
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