Crypto's Dark Side: Funding Human Trafficking

Key Findings

• 85% Increase: Crypto payments to groups suspected of human trafficking saw an 85% jump in 2025.
• Public Blockchains: Most transactions occurred through public blockchains.
• Southeast Asia: The majority of activity was centered in Southeast Asia, involving scam compounds, illegal online gambling, and money laundering networks.

Types of Crypto Activity

1. International Escort and Prostitution Services
2. Labor Recruiters
3. Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) Vendors

Global Reach

• Customers: Payments came from all over the world, highlighting the global scale of these operations.
• Messaging Apps: Criminals increasingly use apps like Telegram to advertise services, find victims, and handle payments.

Financial Insights

• Transparency: The transparency of public blockchains provides a unique view into criminal money flows.
• Financial Scale: The financial scale of these crimes is in the hundreds of millions of dollars, with an estimated $16.1 billion in illicit crypto flows in 2025.

Escort and Prostitution Networks

• Organization: Highly organized, with some services operating legally while others show signs of trafficking.
• Methods: Use stablecoins and Chinese-language money laundering groups to cash out quickly. Telegram channels are used to "clean" illicit funds.

Labor Recruiters

• Scam Compounds: Mostly located in Southeast Asia, these compounds run crypto-based scams.
• Recruitment Fees: Range from $1,000 to $10,000 in cryptocurrency.
• Victims: Often forced to conduct romance scams and other online frauds. Linked to illegal gambling platforms and money laundering services.

CSAM Networks

• Payment Structures: Operate under different payment structures but show similar organized financial patterns.
• Transaction Size: About half of CSAM-related crypto transactions were below $100, reflecting subscription-based models and low per-user pricing in private chat groups.