On February 25, U.S. federal prosecutors announced the seizure of over $61 million in USDT, linked to large-scale cryptocurrency “pig butchering” investment scams. According to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina, law enforcement tracked blockchain fund flows to identify a series of crypto wallets suspected of money laundering. These wallets held assets stolen from victims of crypto romance scams.
The investigation was led by Homeland Security Investigations. Agents traced the victims’ transfer paths to identify wallets with substantial remaining balances and initiated seizure and forfeiture procedures accordingly. U.S. Attorney Ellis Boyle stated that this operation demonstrates law enforcement’s increased efforts to crack down on the crypto scam money chain, especially targeting cross-border transfers and multi-layer address obfuscation used in money laundering.
Court documents show that scam groups typically establish trust through fake emotional relationships, then recommend high-yield crypto investment schemes to victims and lure them onto fake trading platforms. These platforms display fabricated profit data, and when users attempt to withdraw funds, their money is either frozen or they are asked to pay additional “taxes” or “fees,” further extracting funds.
Once the funds enter scam-controlled wallets, the assets are transferred through multiple addresses to obscure their origin, making law enforcement tracking more difficult. In this case, authorities used on-chain analysis techniques to trace the fund flow and confirmed several key accounts meeting asset forfeiture criteria. This incident also highlights the potential risks of stablecoins in crypto scams, on-chain money laundering, and cross-border fund transfers, while reflecting increased regulatory efforts to track USDT scam funds, freeze crypto assets, and combat illegal crypto investment schemes.
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