A month ago, Telegram banned the two biggest black markets for crypto scammer services, hosted on its platform, which had done $35 billion in transactions.
Then it watched those markets rebuild to their previous size and has done nothing to stop them.
https://www.wired.com/story/telegram-purged-chinese-crypto-scam-markets-then-let-them-rebuild/
After its takedowns last month, crypto tracing firm Elliptic warned Telegram that the scammers and their enablers would just shift to the next-biggest markets, and shared an extensive list of their channels and usernames with Telegram. It declined to ban any of them.
Instead Telegram sent me a statement about helping users achieve "financial autonomy" in China despite capital controls there.
But Elliptic points out these markets offer scammers money laundering, stolen data for targeting and other assorted illicit services like prostitution.
The operations that use these markets enslave tens of thousands of people across SE Asia. As former prosecutor Erin West puts it, Telegram has "the ability to shut down a scam economy and the trafficking of human beings. Instead, they’re hosting Craigslist for crypto scammers.”
@agreenberg CCP could tell putin to order Telegram to shut this Chinese scam and extrortion hive down.
The Chinese regime is able to track down even a whiff of criticism of its dictatorship inside its walled intranet.
We can make educated guesses why the CCP chooses to *allow* these criminal groups to operate...