The US Department of Justice has filed a civil forfeiture action seeking about 327,829 USDT (Tether) alleged to be linked to money laundering from an online romance scam. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts says the stablecoins were connected to an alleged scheme run by an individual using the name ‘Linda Brown’ that targeted a Massachusetts resident beginning in 2024. According to the complaint, some of the victim’s funds were traced to multiple unhosted cryptocurrency wallets that were seized in August 2025; the government alleges the crypto in those wallets was proceeds of money laundering.
The forfeiture notice was filed roughly three weeks after Valentine’s Day. Ahead of the holiday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Ohio warned the public not to send money, gift cards, or cryptocurrency to people they have not met in person, citing the high incidence of romance scams.
Cointelegraph contacted Tether for comment but had not received a response at the time of reporting. Separately, Tether told Reuters it has frozen about $4.2 billion worth of USDT linked to suspected criminal activity since 2023. The company can blacklist wallet addresses and says it has done so at authorities’ requests; for example, in February it reported freezing roughly $544 million allegedly tied to unlawful betting platforms and money laundering at the request of Turkish authorities.
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