T3 Financial Crime Unit Freezes $100 Million in Illicit USDT Transactions

Key Points:

• The T3 Financial Crime Unit, a collaboration between Tron, Tether, and TRM Labs, has frozen $100 million in USDT linked to unlawful activities.
• T3 analyzed over $3 billion in USDT transactions across five continents, targeting crimes like money laundering, scams, drug trafficking, and terrorism financing.

Since the launch in September, the T3 Financial Crime Unit, a joint effort between the Tron blockchain, stablecoin issuer Tether, and blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs, has frozen USDT worth $100 million linked to illicit activities.

Read more: T3 Financial Crime Unit Established To Combat Financial Crimes 

T3 Financial Crime Unit Unit Freezes $100 Million in Illicit USDT

According to CoinDesk, T3 Financial Crime Unit said it reviewed millions of transactions on five continents, tracking more than $3 billion in USDT. The unit uses TRM Labs’ blockchain intelligence tools to identify and freeze assets linked to illicit activity.

Tether’s USDT, the largest stablecoin in circulation, has almost $60 billion issued on the Tron blockchain, which is a distant second to Ethereum’s $75 billion issuance.

The head of global investigations at TRM Labs, Chris Janczewski, attributed the largest source of frozen money to “money laundering as a service,” in which other illicit actors hire third parties via the dark web to move ill-begotten funds in a cleaning manner. Other notable targets included investment scams, drug trafficking, terrorism financing, blackmail schemes, hacks and violent crimes.

North Korea’s Crypto Activities Under Scrutiny

Notably, $3 million of the frozen USDT was linked to entities in North Korea. The unit revealed that North Korean operatives have attempted to utilize cryptocurrency projects to facilitate activities for the leadership of the country.

In December, the U.S. Department of Treasury dismantled a North Korean money-laundering network, underlining the increased scrutiny of such activities.