DOJ Seeks to Seize $61 Million in Crypto From Binance Accounts Tied to Iranian Oil Sales

$61 Million Forfeiture Complaint

Federal prosecutors in New York have opened a civil forfeiture action targeting $61 million in cryptocurrency held in trading accounts tied to Binance, alleging the funds are proceeds of black-market sales of Iranian oil. The US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York filed the complaint on September 14, arguing the assets trace back to a sanctions-evasion pipeline that ultimately financed Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), designated a terrorist organization by Washington. Two China-based firms, Blessed Trust and Hexa Whale, are named as the conduits that moved oil revenue through Binance accounts before it reached IRGC-linked entities. Deputy US Attorney Sean Buckley said the action shows the government's determination to strip Iran and its terrorist proxies of the illegal money they rely on. The official announcement from the prosecutor's office confirms the action targets the cryptocurrency itself rather than the exchange.

Entity A and the $1.5B Flow

The complaint's core allegation centers on a network of interconnected personal wallet addresses the filing labels “Entity A,” which prosecutors say received and distributed more than $1.5 billion from illicit Iranian oil sales. According to the docket, these funds were routed to IRGC-linked money-services firms, further crypto addresses and an Iran-based exchange — the kind of crypto whale-scale movement that leaves deep on-chain footprints. Blessed Trust, despite presenting itself to financial and crypto service providers as an asset-management and digital-custody firm, is accused of transferring oil-sale proceeds and converting fiat into crypto, in part through US-based token issuers. Hexa Whale, which claimed to be a commodity brokerage, allegedly ran similar transactions alongside Blessed Trust, with Chinese oil-sector companies among their clients. FBI New York assistant director James C. Barnacle Jr. said the operation proves sanction-evading crypto networks can be traced and cut off from their funding base.

Teng's “False and Defamatory” Stand

The filing revives a fight Binance believed it had settled in public. In March 2026, co-CEO Richard Teng responded to Senator Blumenthal's inquiry by calling the allegations “false and defamatory,” insisting the exchange's compliance program was industry-leading. The company has maintained that no funds directly touched Iranian entities — yet the new complaint names the same two firms that sat at the center of the earlier Senate probe. Binance's sanctions history also weighs on the narrative: in 2023 it pleaded guilty to sanctions violations and paid a $4.3 billion penalty, and prior tracing findings indicated an Iran-linked exchange fined by Dubai sent $676 million onto Binance. Notably, the current action does not charge the exchange, and Binance appears nowhere among the defendants.

UK License Bid Timing

The complaint lands two weeks before Binance's UK licensing effort reaches a milestone, with applications opening on September 30. The exchange is seeking authorization from the Financial Conduct Authority under Britain's new digital-asset framework, a process built explicitly around governance and compliance standards. An Iran-linked laundering complaint attached to its platform is unlikely to make that case easier, even with no charges pending against Binance itself. How the FCA weighs the filing against the application will become clearer once the window opens — and for institutions evaluating the exchange's licensing posture, the docket is now part of the record. Readers tracking the market in real time can follow live spot and futures prices on MEXC.

Compliance Stakes for the Market

Our reading of the complaint filed in the Southern District of New York is that its legal posture matters as much as its headline figure: this is an in rem civil action against assets, with Blessed Trust and Hexa Whale named — not the exchange. Courts, not press releases, will decide what those wallets held and where it went. With Bitcoin (BTC) trading near $78,000 as of publication, the case underscores that sanctions compliance, not price action, defines this cycle's regulatory battleground. If enforcement pressure keeps pushing flows off centralized venues, traders may rotate toward platforms like venues such as Hyperliquid or DeFi 2.0 architectures built on liquidity pools — though those carry their own counterparty and regulatory risks. Either way, sanctions tracing capability, as this crypto whale-scale case shows, now reaches across every venue.