U.S. Treasury sanctions Burmese militia group over crypto pig butchering scams

The United States Department of the Treasury has imposed sanctions on the Karen National Army, a Burmese militia group, accusing it of orchestrating large-scale crypto scams alongside other offences.

The sanctions were announced on May 5 in a press release from the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. The press release revealed that the KNA has been at the center of a complex network of sophisticated digital fraud schemes, including the notorious crypto “pig butchering” scams.

In these scams, victims are typically lured online through dating apps and social media, where scammers initiate prolonged, increasingly intimate conversations. Once trust is established, targets are induced to invest in bogus crypto projects controlled by the scammers. Over time, they are coaxed into committing increasingly large sums. The endgame arrives when the scammers vanish, taking the funds with them.

Treasury’s press release explained that proceeds from these South East Asian crypto scams are often laundered through the Huione Group in Cambodia, which was recently designated a “primary money laundering concern” under Section 311 of the USA PATRIOT Act.

Huione has been previously linked to laundering stolen crypto assets for North Korea’s Lazarus Group, and is alleged to have moved over $4 billion in illicit funds between August 2021 and January 2025. Its operations include a sprawling array of businesses such as Huione Pay, Huione Crypto, and a Telegram-based black market now rebranded as Haowang Guarantee. FinCEN also flagged the group’s USDH stablecoin, which is reportedly designed to evade law enforcement by being resistant to freezing.