The United States Attorney’s Office in Chicago, Illinois, made an announcement on March 12th regarding the confiscation of around $1.4 million in Tether (USDT). These funds were believed to be the proceeds from fraud committed through a customer support scam. The Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) led the efforts to recover the funds, with Tether providing assistance.
According to a press release by Tether, the funds were stolen through a customer support scam that primarily targeted elderly individuals, as stated by the Attorney’s Office. Victims were targeted through a popup ad on their computers, which claimed that their computer had been compromised. The ad provided a fake customer support number for the victims to contact. Upon calling the number, the victims were informed that their bank accounts had also been affected and were then transferred to another scammer pretending to be a support agent.
The victims were directed to transfer their funds to USDT in order to keep it safe. However, once they did so, they lost control of their tokens and contact with the fraudsters was severed. The Attorney’s Office noted that this seizure represents one of the first instances in which the U.S. has recovered USDT from an unhosted digital currency wallet.
The investigation is still ongoing, and it remains unclear how the funds were recovered. However, an affidavit filed on January 24th suggests that law enforcement agents were able to trace the funds to five different wallets. The document states that these suspected wallets contained assets that were “traceable to proceeds of a wire fraud scheme involving financial fraud and were transferred in relatively small batches of currency through a series of intermediary addresses for no discernable purpose, very probably in an effort to launder the proceeds.”