Tether Confiscates 225M USDT Involved in Pig Butchering Romance Scam
After months of investigation, USDT stablecoin maker Tether has announced the confiscation of $225 million of its tokens involved in a pig butchering romance scam.
The announcement, conveyed through a press release, detailed Tether’s collaboration with the OKX crypto exchange and the US Department of Justice (DoJ) in executing the investigation.
The frozen funds represent the largest-ever USDT tokens confiscation in the fledgling Web3 ecosystem.
According to Tether, the seized funds were connected to an international human trafficking and pig butchering romance syndicate.
To aid in its investigation, the USDT issuer utilized blockchain tracking tools provided by the renowned Chainalysis platform. This technology enabled them to trace the flow of illicitly obtained funds through the blockchain, putting an immediate stop to their further use.
The illicit funds were stored in self-custodial crypto wallets, necessitating a month-long investigation and significant resources to locate them.
The privately run blockchain service provider stated that the frozen cryptocurrency wallets are currently on the secondary market, and the wallets did not belong to its customers.
On-chain data from the Etherscan platform showed that the funds were seized across 37 different crypto wallets, with the vast majority of these digital tokens transferred to the OKX exchange.
Tether froze ~225M $USDT (37 wallets) linked to a human trafficking group 1 hour ago.
These wallets had been moving $USDT before being frozen, with most of the $USDT being transferred to #OKX.
Check frozen TX here.https://t.co/TlfFJvpgiW pic.twitter.com/vEMTd3YzBq
— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) November 20, 2023
Meanwhile, during the entire operation, a number of legitimate cryptocurrency
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