Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building for a ProCoinNews article about the Huione cloud-account seizure.

DOJ Seizes Huione Cloud Account in Crypto Scam Laundering Crackdown

By Isaac • June 24, 2026 5:06 pm • Comments

The Justice Department announced on June 23, 2026 that it seized a cloud computing account used by subsidiaries of Cambodia-based Huione Group.

DOJ said the account hosted backend infrastructure for those subsidiaries. The agency alleges the entities helped move proceeds from cryptocurrency investment frauds, cyber scams and other criminal activity across blockchains and into the banking system.

This is a different kind of enforcement move. Instead of chasing wallet addresses after the money has already scattered, investigators went after the plumbing that allegedly let the money flow in the first place.

Trending: Europe Just Finished MiCA. Now the Industry Wants a Second Draft.

That is the shift crypto operators should pay attention to.


Elliptic described the blockchain-intelligence trail behind the FBI action. Elliptic said its intelligence was used by the FBI in the action against Huione Group operators.

The firm described Huione Guarantee as a Telegram-based marketplace serving online fraud networks across Southeast Asia. It said merchants sold laundering services, stolen personal data and other tools used to run investment and pig-butchering scams.

Elliptic said Huione Guarantee had received more than $31 billion in cryptoasset transactions before it was forced offline. It also said Huione Pay received at least $103 billion in lifetime cryptoasset payments.

Those figures should be framed as Elliptic’s blockchain-intelligence estimates, not as new DOJ forfeiture amounts. The value for readers is that tracing firms can turn a messy network of marketplaces, wallets and payment arms into a map law enforcement can act on.

That is why the private-intelligence piece belongs in a crypto article about a public enforcement action.

FinCEN laid out the earlier Treasury money-laundering concern finding. FinCEN said Huione Group served as a critical node for laundering proceeds from DPRK cyber heists, transnational scam groups and virtual-currency investment fraud.

The agency identified a network that included Huione Pay, Huione Crypto and Haowang Guarantee. That matters because Huione was described as a connected financial and marketplace ecosystem rather than a single exchange account.

FinCEN said its investigation found at least $4 billion in illicit proceeds laundered between August 2021 and January 2025. The agency broke out at least $37 million from DPRK cyber heists, at least $36 million from CVC investment scams and $300 million from other cyber scams.

Those amounts give the DOJ seizure a historical runway. The cloud-account action came after regulators had already mapped what they viewed as the laundering risk around the group.

That background helps readers understand why the U.S. response now includes both financial-system cutoffs and infrastructure disruption.

FinCEN proposed expanding the U.S. financial-system cutoff to H-Pay and successor entities. FinCEN’s same-day action proposed amending the earlier Huione final rule to include H-Pay Service PLC and successor entities.

The agency said the move was meant to guard against attempts to circumvent being cut off from the U.S. financial system. That piece matters because networks under pressure often rebrand, route around sanctions or push activity through successor entities.

For crypto compliance teams, the lesson is that enforcement rarely stops at one name on a list. Treasury can keep expanding the perimeter when it believes a new entity is carrying forward the same risk.

That makes the Huione story a warning for exchanges, payment processors and compliance vendors watching successor-entity risk. The DOJ seizure disrupted infrastructure, while FinCEN’s proposal targeted financial access.

Together, those moves show a two-track strategy: cut off the money path and break the operating stack.


The Block placed the DOJ seizure inside crypto enforcement and Operation Riptide. The Block reported that the seizure followed FinCEN’s earlier designation of Huione Group as a primary money laundering concern.

Its coverage tied the DOJ action to Operation Riptide and to U.S. concerns about cybercrime proceeds moving through blockchain networks. That context matters because the case is not a narrow one-wallet enforcement action.

It sits inside a broader campaign against infrastructure used by investment scams, cyber heists and cross-border laundering networks. The Block also pointed to FBI IC3 data showing more than $7.2 billion in reported U.S. cryptocurrency investment fraud losses in 2025.

That number explains why law enforcement is treating the backend services as part of the fraud ecosystem. Keep that fraud-loss figure separate from the specific Huione allegations.

It should use the figure to show the scale of the problem that agencies say infrastructure seizures are meant to disrupt.

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