i found some court filings that detail one man's attempt to use the courts to force #Tether and other #cryptocurrency companies to give him back $3 million that was stolen from him.
spoiler: it didn't go well. the crypto companies used their standard defense of "#blockchain is open source so not our problem lol".
not only did he have to chase the crypto companies through multiple jurisdictions (#singapore, british virgin islands, etc), in the end i don't think he got any of his money back from the (probably) #Russian criminals who stole it.
a russian hosting service that takes payment in crypto, Aeza Group, was just hit with #OFAC sanctions.
they've sent funds to a bunch of the shadiest crypto exchanges - #Cryptomus, #MEXC, #Binance, and (of course) #HTX, the crypto exchange run by the business partner of the president of the united states.
also looks like they took payment in #Tether, the #stablecoin whose money is managed by america's secretary of commerce howard lutnick.
* OFAC press release: https://ofac.treasury.gov/recent-actions/20250701
* Wallet: https://intel.arkm.com/explorer/address/TU4tDFRvcKhAZ1jdihojmBWZqvJhQCnJ4F
a few weeks ago right before #Israel attacked #Iran #Tether froze a #Tron wallet that had over the course of a year managed to receive almost $2 billion, at least $1.2 bn of which came from #Binance (which historically did huge business in Iran).
there was only $2.5 million in the wallet at the time of the freeze but in terms of how much money flowed through it, it's the 4th highest volume wallet ever frozen.
based on the fact that another wallet frozen ca. the same time w/similar usage patterns turned out to be linkable to #Hezbollah, the govt of #Iran, and a dark market for nation state sized orders of weapons & #drugs (#HuionePay / #HuioneGuarantee), I have a hunch this wallet was also used by the #IRGC to fund its proxies in the region like the #Houthis and #Hezbollah and #Israel has chosen not to disclose that it was responsible for the seizure yet.
* arkham view of wallet: https://intel.arkm.com/explorer/address/TPAUZAQFjhPvbNdSp22KqzSHHkAvKLgXjn
* similar wallet: https://universeodon.com/@cryptadamist/114746678768755105
tfw u see a million dollar transfer to "Terrorist Seizure ASO 29/23" from a wallet that managed to move over $1 billion on chain before Tether froze it a few weeks ago
ΩΩ
Since #Israel attacked #Iran Tether has frozen 112 blockchain wallets on Tron and Ethereum (the #crypto equivalent of freezing a bank account, usually on suspicion/proof of money laundering).
- Collectively those wallets received ~$700 million before being frozen
- The top 40 of those accounts are *all* on #JustinSun's #Tron blockchain
- Iranian exchanges almost exclusively use #Tether on Tron for USD xfers. They even publicly instruct their users on how to avoid #sanctions
- The Iranian govt, including the #IRGC (a sanctioned #terrorist group), has long been rumoured to be among the Iranians using Tether to move money to their proxies like #Hezbollah and #Hamas
- Israelis hacked the largest Iranian crypto exchange #Nobitex for $90 million last week. Nobitex is the largest user of USDT that I know of in Iran
- Justin Sun is now Trump's biz partner (and #HowardLutnick has been Tether's partner for yrs)
Lots more details here:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1937696509040165020.html
whenever the price of #bitcoin starts to drop because of global instability (or any other reason) “investors” immediately decide to send billions of dollars to #Tether, a financial company that more or less openly works with #Iran, has almost no employees, has been linked to hundreds of financial crimes, and has never produced an audit to prove it actually has all the money it says it does to back its #stablecoin #USDT. it's like clockwork.
today’s crash saw an immediate creation of $2 billion USDT, 100% of it on Donald Trump’s new business partner Justin Sun’s blockchain Tron (AKA “the crime chain”).
@neurovagrant @molly0xfff pit of vipers all the way down.
lots more about #nobitex open use of #HowardLutnick's #Tether dollars here:
https://cryptadamus.substack.com/p/trumps-transition-team-is-tethered
maybe now's a bad time to remind everyone that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has helped Iranians access the US dollar markets for many years now
ladies, gentlemen, and everyone else - i give you the most profitable financial companies in the world.
notice anything different about the chinese stablecoin company? (i mean other than the fact that that company - #Tether - has never been audited and so their numbers are based on “trust us bro”)
Classic example of using a cryptocurrency company to execute a money laundering pipeline.
Justice Department prosecutors in Brooklyn NY charged the defendant routed ~ $530M in funds through the dollar-pegged stablecoin tether and falsified documents to mask funds tied to sanctioned Russian institutions were being laundered. Further, prosecutors say the defendant maintained ties to Russian intelligence, as well as officials in Iran. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/09/crypto-russia-laundering.html #Crypto #Cryptocurrency #Stablecoins #Tether #MoneyLaudering #Russia #Banking #CryptoCrime #BankFraud
@cR0w and of course it's half a billion dollars of Russian money laundered through the American financial system via #Tether, the stablecoin whose money is managed by America's Secretary of Commerce #HowardLutnick: https://cryptadamus.substack.com/p/trumps-transition-team-is-tethered
@GhostOnTheHalfShell Rumble (the right wing youtube site) already announced it's turning itself into a payments app (payments will be made in #Tether, as both Tether and #HowardLutnick are major shareholders in #Rumble).
suspect we'll see all the social media platforms follow suit soon enough. remember, #Facebook tried to do this a few years ago with #Libra (as documented in @davidgerard 's.book "Libra Shrugged)
"#Stablecoins remained the primary choice for #terrorist financing organizations" according to #TRMLabs (who have a questionable history as far as downplaying things like crypto's terrorist financing use cases but are at least more reliable than #Chainalysis)
and when they say "stablecoins" they really mean "#Tether on the blockchain (#Tron) owned by #Trump's new business partner #JustinSun".
(h/t @cybeardjm)
great explanation of what the Trump family is really doing with their new #stablecoin #USD1:
> "Imagine a banking system stripped of all current safeguards and requirements. Now imagine it's controlled by people who run commercial businesses profiting from your spending. That is what the GENIUS Act is paving the way for. It poses significant risks to the economy, the consumer, and national security."
https://thesillyserious.substack.com/p/goodbye-usd-hello-usd1
it's official: His Excellency Justin Sun, a man instrumental to the building of the #Tether cartel (a massive money laundering machine on a scale the world has never seen) with financial connections to every kind of pig butchering scam, terrorist financing group, and ransomware ransom, will be returning to the U.S. to dine with the president after years of being more or less a fugitive on the run from both the U.S. and Chinese authorities.
The United States of America has become a mafia state where those in power are unafraid of engaging and encouraging every time of crime (up to and including violence) against the governed in order to enrich themselves.
https://www.wsj.com/finance/currencies/justin-sun-trump-crypto-dinner-7efd5367
#JeffMiller, a lobbyist & top #Trump fundraiser, is another founding member. In the Q1 of this year, he has registered to represent 39 new corporate clients, including the #crypto firm #Tether, an overseas operation that was a longtime target of US regulators until recently….
Bros filing for ETFs to trade the exact same market #JustinSun was indicted by the #SEC for manipulating last year.
#TRX is the “gas” on Justin Sun’s #Tron blockchain, which exists primarily to allow the movement of #Tether's #USDT token on a blockchain that is less scrutinized than ethereum. Roughly half of Tether’s ~$140 billion market cap lives on Tron and that’s the blockchain preferred by drug cartels, #pigbutchering fraudsters, and #sanctions evaders, which is why a lot of people call it “the crime chain”.
Nothing else of substance has ever happened on the Tron blockchain. For more on Tether see my post linked below.
* Filing: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/2064768/000199937125004423/canary-s1_041825.htm
* More on Tether: https://cryptadamus.substack.com/p/trumps-transition-team-is-tethered