Binance Faces DOJ Probe Over Iran Trades, $61M Seizure Bid

US federal prosecutors are examining whether Binance knowingly allowed trading that violated American sanctions on Iran, according to a Bloomberg News report published Monday and confirmed by Reuters. The inquiry, led by the Manhattan US Attorney's Office with the Justice Department's Criminal Division in Washington also involved, revives scrutiny of the exchange's compliance controls nearly three years after Binance paid a $4.316 billion penalty for related failures.

What prosecutors are looking at

Bloomberg reported that federal prosecutors are investigating whether Binance Holdings Ltd., operator of the world's largest crypto exchange, violated US sanctions on Iran by not stopping certain trading on its platform, and that authorities are scrutinizing whether Binance knowingly allowed the trading. Reuters, citing the same Bloomberg account, said it had not independently verified the report. Neither outlet identified the specific transactions, customers or accounts under review, or disclosed when the investigation began. The Justice Department declined to comment, and the Manhattan US Attorney's Office could not immediately be reached outside business hours, according to multiple outlets that sought comment.

A Binance spokesperson responded with a written statement: "We fully cooperate with law enforcement, and we remain committed to rooting out and shutting down bad actors," adding that the company maintains a zero-tolerance policy for sanctions violations. The statement did not directly address whether Binance is aware of the reported investigation. Binance Co-CEO Richard Teng separately said the company does not permit transactions with sanctioned individuals.

Why the 2023 settlement matters here

The new scrutiny follows Binance's November 2023 resolution with US authorities, in which the exchange pleaded guilty to violations of the Bank Secrecy Act, operating an unregistered money-transmitting business and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, agreeing to a total criminal financial penalty of $4.316 billion. Then-CEO Changpeng Zhao stepped down and pleaded guilty to failing to maintain an effective anti-money-laundering program. In that case, prosecutors said Binance caused more than $898 million in trades between US users and users ordinarily resident in Iran between January 2018 and May 2022, and Binance agreed to retain an independent compliance monitor for three years. The current investigation is separate from that 2023 case, but it tests whether the compliance overhaul Binance promised at the time actually worked. Scrutiny of Binance's Iran-related controls had already resurfaced in March 2026, when the Wall Street Journal reported the DOJ was examining whether Iran used Binance to evade sanctions, and Senators Elizabeth Warren, Chris Van Hollen and Ruben Gallego said they planned congressional oversight of that inquiry.

A separate forfeiture case adds new detail

Ten days before the Bloomberg report, on September 14, 2026, the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York filed a civil forfeiture complaint captioned United States v. All USD Tether Held in the Following Cryptocurrency Addresses, seeking roughly $61 million in USDT held across ten addresses, according to court records cited by crypto.news. The complaint alleges two Chinese firms, Blessed Trust and Hexa Whale, used Binance trading accounts to launder proceeds from black-market sales of sanctioned Iranian crude oil and petroleum products, as part of a wider network prosecutors call "Entity A" that moved more than $1.5 billion in illicit oil proceeds, according to Crowdfund Insider's account of the filing. Prosecutors say the funds were intended to help finance the Iranian government and military bodies, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Binance is not named as a defendant in that complaint, and the allegations against Blessed Trust and Hexa Whale remain unproven until a court rules. Binance has said it was contacted by law enforcement about Hexa Whale in April 2025, provided know-your-customer records in June 2025, and delisted the account in August 2025; it says Blessed Trust underwent a source-of-funds review and was offboarded in January 2026.

The numbers so far

What this does and doesn't establish

An investigation is not a finding of wrongdoing, and Bloomberg's reporting rests on unnamed sources rather than an indictment, search warrant or on-the-record DOJ statement. Prosecutors have not disclosed whether the review will produce charges, a settlement or no action at all. The $61 million forfeiture action is a civil proceeding against specific crypto addresses, not a criminal case against Binance, and it uses a lower evidentiary standard than a criminal prosecution; it does not by itself establish that Binance's exchange-wide controls failed the new, separate DOJ inquiry is examining. Binance's own figures on shrinking Iranian exposure and expanded compliance staffing come from the company, not from an independent audit or the DOJ, and describe different metrics that should not be read as interchangeable: a percentage decline in exposure to four named Iranian exchanges does not describe the exchange's total exposure to Iran-linked activity, and compliance headcount does not by itself measure whether specific transactions were screened correctly. What remains unknown, based on the sources reviewed, is which transactions, customers or time period the new Manhattan probe is examining, when it began, and whether it will result in any enforcement action.