Justice Department Announces Seizure of $9 Million in Tether

• The Justice Department announced the seizure of $9 million worth of Tether.
• The organization behind the seized funds allegedly exploited over 70 victims through romance scams and cryptocurrency confidence scams, also known as “pig butchering.”
• The criminal actors behind the scams used money laundering techniques, such as “chain hopping,” to launder the victim’s deposits and exchange them for several different cryptocurrencies to obfuscate the nature, source, control, and ownership of those proceeds.

The United States Department of Justice has announced the seizure of $9 million worth of Tether, a cryptocurrency linked to the US dollar, as part of an investigation into an organization accused of exploiting over 70 victims through romance and cryptocurrency confidence scams. The funds were traced to cryptocurrency addresses allegedly linked to the scam, with the department stating that the seizure would bring some closure to the victims affected.

Details of the scam

According to court documents, criminal actors worked together to target victims and convince them to make cryptocurrency deposits by fraudulently representing that the victims were making investments with trusted firms and cryptocurrency exchanges. In reality, the purported firms and cryptocurrency exchanges were non-existent trading platforms.

Agents and analysts from the U.S. Secret Service (USSS) were able to trace those victim deposits and observed that the funds were quickly laundered through dozens of cryptocurrency addresses and exchanged for several different cryptocurrencies, a money laundering technique often referred to as “chain hopping.” These techniques are used to “layer” the proceeds of criminal activity into new cryptocurrency ecosystems, all to obfuscate the nature, source, control, and ownership of those proceeds.