DOJ Seeks Forfeiture of $61.19M USDT in Iran Oil Case

The US Justice Department is seeking forfeiture of 61.19 million USDT, worth about $61.2 million at the token's one-to-one dollar peg, sitting across 10 addresses on the Tron blockchain that Tether has already frozen. Prosecutors in Manhattan say that sum is a fraction of more than $1.5 billion in proceeds from black-market sales of sanctioned Iranian crude oil and petroleum products, and the complaint filed on Sept. 14, 2026 is a civil action against the tokens themselves rather than a criminal charge against any person or exchange.

What prosecutors filed and what they allege

According to The Block, the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York filed a civil forfeiture complaint against roughly $61 million in crypto proceeds, alleging the underlying oil sales were intended to finance the Iranian government and its military components, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which Washington designates a foreign terrorist organization. The Block quoted Deputy US Attorney Sean S. Buckley describing the government's aim as "our determination to deprive the Government of Iran and its terrorist proxies of the illegal money" the networks rely on.

The complaint names two corporate actors, Blessed Trust and Hexa Whale. CoinDesk reported that Blessed Trust markets itself as a digital-asset custodial services firm and allegedly provided a fiat-to-crypto conversion ramp for Iran-linked transactions, while Hexa Whale allegedly performed similar functions while presenting itself as a commodities brokerage; both, CoinDesk said, counted Chinese oil and petroleum companies among their clients. Crypto.news reported that prosecutors traced more than $1.5 billion through seven linked wallets and that all 10 targeted addresses, holding 61.19 million USDT in total, were frozen by Tether.

Sources describe the two firms' home jurisdiction differently. The Block and CoinDesk, following the DOJ statement, call them Chinese companies; the smaller outlet Coininsider describes them as Hong Kong companies. Separately, the news agency copy carried by Siasat referred to the venue used as "a UAE-based cryptocurrency exchange," while The Block and CoinDesk name Binance directly. We have not seen the complaint's own corporate-registration language, so the safe statement is the one all the reports share: two China-linked corporate accounts on Binance are alleged to have been the conduit.

The verified figures

Binance's position and the limits of this filing

Binance is not a defendant. Cryptobriefing noted that the complaint targets the two China-based firms and the assets, not the platform, and crypto.news reported the filing does not charge Binance with a criminal offence in this proceeding. A Binance spokesperson told CoinDesk the exchange will keep cooperating with law enforcement and will "investigate, restrict or freeze accounts where appropriate, offboard users, and report to relevant authorities" where illicit-finance risk is identified.

The same two account names had already surfaced in Congress. CoinDesk reported in March 2026 that Binance told a Senate investigation it had identified Hexa Whale and Blessed Trust as entities whose accounts interacted with flagged wallets, removed Hexa Whale that August and offboarded Blessed Trust in January after completing its reviews, and maintained that, to its knowledge, no Binance account had sent crypto directly to an Iran-based entity. Senator Richard Blumenthal's office said the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations opened a preliminary inquiry into crypto sanctions evasion by Iranian and Russian entities, citing press reporting on roughly $1.7 billion in flows, with document requests due March 6, 2026. In June 2026, Senator Adam Schiff and colleagues wrote to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche about Binance's role in Iranian sanctions evasion. Monday's complaint is the first public court action we found covering the same two accounts; it does not resolve the congressional questions about the exchange's controls.

How an issuer freeze becomes a government seizure

The mechanics here are the part most readers will not have seen before. Cointelegraph reported that a seizure warrant authorises the FBI to take custody by having Tether destroy the frozen tokens and issue replacements of equal value to an FBI-controlled hardware wallet. That is possible because USDT is a centrally issued liability: Tether can blacklist an address and reissue the balance, which no one can do to bitcoin. Tether's own April 23, 2026 statement says it has worked with more than 340 law enforcement agencies in 65 countries across more than 2,300 cases, including over 1,200 tied to US authorities, and has supported freezes of more than $4.4 billion.

Two comparisons are worth keeping straight. The $61.19 million is the balance available in the targeted wallets, not the size of the alleged scheme; against the more than $1.5 billion prosecutors say they traced, the recoverable slice is roughly 4 percent. And this action is smaller than the single $344 million freeze Tether disclosed in April 2026, which was executed in coordination with OFAC, the Treasury's sanctions office. A freeze stops movement; a forfeiture judgment changes ownership. Coininsider correctly noted that a court still has to determine whether the assets are subject to forfeiture.

What is still unknown

Several gaps matter for how this ends. Available reporting does not identify who, if anyone, will file a claim contesting the forfeiture, and no criminal charges against individuals were announced alongside the complaint. The reports say the wallets were frozen "in 2025" without giving freeze dates for each of the 10 addresses, so the gap between detection and court action cannot be measured precisely. Nor do the reports tie specific oil cargoes or buyers to specific transfers. Finally, nothing in this filing establishes an enforcement outcome for Binance: an allegation about customer accounts is not a finding about the exchange's compliance programme, and the Senate inquiry and the Schiff letter remain outstanding rather than concluded.