On September 9, 2026, the US Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) added four new entities to the Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list and amended or issued 12 license-related Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs). Three of the designations, made under the Transnational Criminal Organizations (TCO) sanctions authority, target a network behind cyber-scam operations that defrauded Americans, while the fourth blocks a counter-terrorism target under Executive Order 13224. Because OFAC designations take effect on publication, the new SDNs, their property, and their listed digital-currency wallets are blocked from the moment the list update published, with no grace period.
The action was announced through OFAC's September 9, 2026 recent-actions page and a Treasury press release. Sanctions compliance, screening, and crypto-compliance teams must treat the update as an immediate screening event.
Which entities did OFAC designate, and what is blocked now?
OFAC added three TCO-linked entities behind a single cyber-scam operation: XINBI GUARANTEE (also known as "XINBI"), registered across Burma, Thailand, and Laos; ANWEN TECHNOLOGY CO., LTD., a Cambodia computer-programming firm linked to XINBI; and SAFEW TECHNOLOGY CO., LTD., a Singapore entity also linked to XINBI. The fourth new listing is LOS TIGUERONES (also known as "Los Fenix" and "Los Igualitos"), an Ecuador- and Peru-based transnational group designated under the counter-terrorism authority of Executive Order 13224, as amended by Executive Order 13886, and carrying a secondary-sanctions risk under section 1(b) of that order.
The XINBI GUARANTEE designation carries a sharp compliance hook for cryptocurrency businesses: OFAC listed dozens of Tron (TRX) digital-currency wallet addresses for XINBI. The same action also appended further Tron (TRX) and Monero (XMR) wallet addresses to the existing ISIL KHORASAN listing (ISIS-K) as an administrative correction. Virtual asset service providers (VASPs), exchanges, and trading platforms must add every listed address to their transaction-monitoring and freezing filters without delay.
Who must screen the new SDNs, and under what liability?
US banks, payment processors, money transmitters, crypto exchanges, and VASPs, plus any trade-compliance or sanctions-screening function touching US persons or US-dollar clearing, must act. OFAC sanctions apply extraterritorially to any transaction touching the US financial system or a US person, so foreign firms using USD correspondent banking are not exempt.
The obligations are strict-liability and immediate. Under 31 CFR Part 501, the Reporting, Procedures and Penalties Regulations, civil penalties attach for dealing in blocked property without intent, and voluntary self-disclosure can materially mitigate a penalty. Two rules drive the screening work:
- The 50 Percent Rule: any entity 50% or more owned, in the aggregate, by one or more blocked persons is itself blocked even when not separately listed on the SDN list. Compliance teams must therefore map ownership chains around XINBI GUARANTEE, ANWEN, and SAFEW to catch unlisted affiliates.
- Blocking and reporting: property and interests of the designated persons must be blocked and reported to OFAC, and transactions involving them are prohibited absent authorization.
What do the amended and new license FAQs change?
OFAC amended 10 existing FAQs (numbers 5, 13, 51, 58, 59, 74, 75, 76, 77, and 78) and published two new ones (FAQs 1269 and 1270) as part of a recurring review to keep its licensing and name-matching guidance current. The amended set spans OFAC's FAQ topic pages, license guidance, and the guidance on assessing OFAC name matches, which is the operational core of how compliance teams tune screening filters and resolve false positives.
Because the changes are guidance-level rather than new license issuances, the practical impact is interpretive. Teams that rely on these FAQs to calibrate screening thresholds, license-application scope, or match-resolution workflows should re-read each amended FAQ against their current procedures and update internal playbooks, screening rules, and training where the wording shifted. The two new FAQs, 1269 and 1270, expand the license-related guidance corpus and should be added to license-application guidance libraries.
At a glance: the new SDN designations
| Entity | Program | Key compliance trigger |
|---|---|---|
| XINBI GUARANTEE | TCO | Dozens of Tron (TRX) wallet addresses to block |
| ANWEN TECHNOLOGY CO., LTD. | TCO (linked to XINBI) | 50% Rule ownership mapping required |
| SAFEW TECHNOLOGY CO., LTD. | TCO (linked to XINBI) | 50% Rule ownership mapping required |
| LOS TIGUERONES | FTO / SDGT (EO 13224) | Secondary-sanctions risk under section 1(b) |
Obsidian's continuous, per-jurisdiction monitoring surfaces an SDN list update the moment it publishes, so screening filters and wallet blocklists stay current without manual watch duty.
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Next steps: pull the September 9, 2026 SDN list delta from OFAC's Sanctions List Service and load it into your screening engine today; add every listed Tron and Monero wallet address to transaction-monitoring blocklists; run a 50% Rule ownership sweep around XINBI GUARANTEE, ANWEN, and SAFEW to catch unlisted affiliates; re-read amended FAQs 5, 13, 51, 58, 59, 74, 75, 76, 77, and 78 and new FAQs 1269 and 1270 against your procedures; and brief sanctions, payments, and crypto-compliance staff on the strict-liability effective date, which was September 9, 2026.
