US DOJ Seeks Forfeiture of $61.2M in USDT Tied to Iranian Oil Sales

DOJ Moves to Forfeit $61.2M in USDT

United States federal prosecutors filed a civil forfeiture complaint on September 14 seeking 61.2 million USDT, the dollar-pegged stablecoin issued by Tether, which they allege traces to black-market Iranian oil sales. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York named ten TRON addresses as defendants in rem in United States v. All USD Tether Held in the Following Cryptocurrency Addresses, case 1:26-cv-08010. Court records show the targeted wallets held exactly 61,192,367.59 USDT when the complaint was submitted, with per-address balances ranging from 1 million to more than 12.75 million USDT — and Tether had already frozen every address, two on July 26, 2025 and the remaining eight on June 15, 2025. A seizure warrant issued the same day by U.S. Magistrate Judge Ona T. Wang authorizes the FBI to bring the tokens into government custody. The forfeiture complaint states Tether is expected to burn the frozen tokens, mint replacement USDT of equal value and transfer the proceeds to an FBI-controlled hardware wallet in the Southern District of New York. Prosecutors allege Hong Kong-incorporated Blessed Trust Limited and Hexa Whale Trading Limited used Binance accounts to convert Iranian crude proceeds into crypto, with seven linked “Entity A” addresses moving more than $1.5 billion toward the Iranian exchange Nobitex, IRGC-related wallets and fronts tied to the sanctioned oil firm Sepehr Energy Jahan Nama Pars.

Chainflip Discloses 736,442 USDT Drain

A separate reminder of where USDT risk concentrates came from Chainflip, the cross-chain swap protocol, which reported on September 13 that an exploit of its TRON USDT handling had drained 736,442.17 USDT through six unauthorized payouts. Chainflip is not a sidechain but a validator network that signs swaps across connected blockchains, and on TRON it read swap instructions from the memo field attached to transactions — a different mechanism from the dedicated contract functions used on most chains it supports. Attackers discovered they could append their own memo to a transaction the validators had already signed. The system read that memo as a fresh swap instruction, treated the swap as failed and issued a refund — producing two payouts on a single deposit. Over roughly 90 minutes the attacker tried the trick eight times, starting small and roughly doubling the amount after each success. The team detected the anomaly only when subsequent payouts began failing. One user swap of 115,654.41 USDT was left unpaid, though those funds remain in the protocol's vault and can be processed once the network restarts. Chainflip stressed that all other funds are unaffected and said affected users will be made whole; the network remains paused while the fix and restart plan are finalized. It also warned users about phishing emails impersonating the team.

Seoul's Cash-for-USDT Blind Spot

In South Korea, the enforcement question runs in the opposite direction: not freezing USDT, but taxing the cash moving behind it. With digital asset taxation scheduled to take effect next year, transactions routed through unregistered exchangers outside exchanges could fall outside the tax net. Registered domestic venues will submit transaction statements and aggregation tables to the National Tax Service, letting authorities cross-check declared income against reported trading volume. Blockchain records alone, however, show only that USDT moved — not how much cash changed hands or with whom. A ruling from Chuncheon District Court illustrates the scale: a man in his 30s received a one-year prison term for violating the Specific Financial Information Act after exchanging roughly 3.39 billion won in USDT across 152 cash deals between January and June, recruiting clients through a Telegram channel and charging fees of 2–5% while operating without registering as a virtual asset business. Authorities can establish taxable income only by first catching the exchanger, then securing client lists, wallet addresses and cash payout records to reconcile against on-chain transfers. The Financial Intelligence Unit lacks direct investigative power over unregistered operators, and an amendment sponsored by ten lawmakers to grant it that authority remains at committee stage. The National Assembly Budget Office has warned the gaps could trigger tax resistance — a friction point as stablecoin awareness among US consumers already lags at 16% in recent survey data. Readers tracking the market in real time can follow live spot and futures prices on Bitget.

Freeze-First Enforcement Defines USDT Risk

Read together, the three developments trace a single arc: USDT's utility as settlement rails is inseparable from issuer-level control and a fully visible ledger. Tether — issuer of 60.5% of a record $300 billion stablecoin market, holder of $115 billion in US Treasury securities, and previously an active assistant to US sanctions actions — operates the freeze capability that made this week's forfeiture filing mechanically possible. The decisive document remains the SDNY docket: the filing we reviewed in case 1:26-cv-08010 confirms the $61.2 million in tokens were frozen before prosecutors moved, and states plainly that the government's claims are allegations until a federal court enters judgment. For a token marketed as neutral digital cash, freeze-and-forfeiture is now the operative risk profile.