Then in April 2025, CBEX, another fictitious cryptocurrency investment platform went bust. This failure, in turn, left thousands of investors defrauded, with particular burden on African investors including many Nigerians. The platform misleadingly announced that it had only suspended withdrawals temporarily while an audit by a British firm, to be completed in June, was pending. It’s been unmasked for orchestrating an elaborate plan of cross-chain bridging to launder money and keep scamming investors. After protests outside CBEX’s purported headquarters in Nigeria, the Nigerian Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a public warning. As investigations continued, regulators revealed an elaborate scheme that shuttled user deposits between blockchains before ultimately funnelling funds through centralized exchanges and even a US-sanctioned money laundering service. CBEX’s website is still down as of July 2025. This conveys the gravity of the situation and further complicates the chances of investors ever recouping any of their money.
CBEX's Dubious Claims and Investor Backlash
CBEX’s collapse in April 2025 sparked public outrage and a run on the platform. The platform had made outrageous claims of guaranteed returns on cryptocurrency investments. Second, it pulled in a ton of retail investors, particularly from Nigeria and other West African nations.
In an attempt to calm investors, CBEX began telling people that they hadn’t gone out of business. Rather, they claimed that it had merely suspended withdrawals for an audit by a British company. This audit was ostentatiously set to be finalized by June 2025. Yet this theocentric explanation did little to calm the brewing ire, as investors became more and more skeptical about what the site was really up to.
As faith in CBEX crumbled, demonstrators began to show up on the doorstep of CBEX’s alleged Nigerian headquarters. It came to light that investors had demanded the immediate release of their investments, alleging CBEX was operating a Ponzi scheme. From the protests, you could see just how desperate folks have gotten. The result is catastrophic economic distress after depositing their nest egg into the platform.
Cross-Chain Laundering Scheme Unveiled
Behind the facade of a legitimate investment platform, CBEX was orchestrating a complex scheme to launder user deposits through cross-chain bridging. The platform just kicked off the first two phases of the campaign. It commingled the funds by moving them in large sums to and from different blockchains to obscure their origin and endpoint.
User deposits were mainly stored in Tron blockchain. The platform would then convert these deposits mostly made in USDT, to the Ethereum blockchain through a cross-chain bridge. This initial transfer was likely intended to break the direct link between the original deposits and the subsequent movement of funds.
After completing the first swap, CBEX was able to bridge the funds back to the Tron blockchain. Yet, this unnecessarily complicated step treacherously permitted even further obfuscation of the funds. It only served to add a whole new level of complication to the laundering process. The cross-chain swaps were a series of transactions. The initial transaction was dated October 2024 indicating that this particular scheme had been operating for several months.
After successfully finishing the first and second batch of cross-chain bridging, CBEX quickly moved the money. They distributed billions to all major centralized exchanges in advance to make cashing out easy. It’s often true that these exchanges are functioning in jurisdictions with very lax regulatory oversight. Together, they provide launderers with a faster, simpler means of exchanging their proceeds for other cryptocurrencies or fiat currency.
CBEX was constantly exchanging $10,000 of USDT for TRX using a cross-chain bridge. This announcement further signals the platform’s commitment to play a key role in moving capital between blockchains. Though this particular transaction is small, it points to a broader strategy used by CBEX. First, they introduce opacity into the movement of public user deposits.
Regulatory Scrutiny and International Connections
On April 17, 2025, the Nigerian Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) flagged suspicious activities associated with CBEX. They immediately released an investor alert, advising investors to avoid the platform at all costs. This warning was perhaps the blatant and most straightforward signal of regulatory alarm regarding CBEX and its business practices.
Further investigation revealed connections between CBEX and Huione Pay. This Cambodian-based service was recently named a Primary Money Laundering Concern by the US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) in May 2025. Huione Pay was one of the recipients of this money through CBEX. This tells us that the platform was almost certainly using the service to launder money and obfuscate the source of illegal funds.
FinCEN's designation of Huione Pay as a Primary Money Laundering Concern underscores the severity of the situation and the international implications of CBEX's scheme. There’s one major red flag— of the US-sanctioned variety. This could indicate that CBEX’s actions could have far-reaching impacts outside of Nigeria and even the African continent.
The use of Elliptic Investigator's automated cross-chain bridge tracing capabilities can significantly expedite and simplify investigations into CBEX's techniques. These tools give investigators the power to quickly follow the money even through different blockchains. They greatly reduce the time and labor required to expose the complete breadth of the conspiracy.
