Key facts
- The Digital Crime Task Force will use Chainalysis data and AI tools to flag suspicious activity and give law enforcement leads.
- Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said Tether's cumulative USDT freezes exceed $7 billion.
- The task force's priorities include investment and romance scams, crypto theft, terrorist financing, North Korean cyber operations and cartel money laundering.
- Bloomberg reported the T3 Financial Crime Unit, formed with TRM Labs in 2024, disbanded in late August, citing an unnamed source.
- Tether, Tron and TRM Labs did not respond to Cointelegraph requests for comment by publication time.
Tron, Tether and Chainalysis announced a Digital Crime Task Force on November 12, 2026, to identify and disrupt illicit activity involving the USDT stablecoin on the Tron blockchain. The group will use Chainalysis data and AI tools to flag suspicious activity and give law enforcement leads to trace and freeze funds, according to an announcement shared with Cointelegraph.
The task force's stated priorities include investment and romance scams, crypto theft, terrorist financing, North Korean cyber operations and cartel money laundering. Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said in the announcement that criminals are using AI to move faster than ever and that waiting for a victim to report a crime is no longer good enough. He put Tether's cumulative USDT freezes at more than $7 billion.
The announcement follows the disbanding of the T3 Financial Crime Unit, which Tron and Tether formed with TRM Labs in 2024. Bloomberg reported on November 4 that the unit folded in late August, citing an unnamed source who said slow responses and poor coordination hampered it. Cointelegraph said it contacted Tether, Tron and TRM Labs for comment and received no responses by publication time.
TRM Labs reported that USDT on Tron accounted for 99.9% of the $1.07 billion in crypto received by 34 casinos in Sihanoukville, a Cambodian city it described as a hub for scam compounds, between January 1 and September 7. Casinos tied to US-sanctioned networks received $687 million of those inflows, TRM Labs said, citing low fees and deep liquidity as reasons for the token's widespread use in the region.
Blockchain intelligence company Elliptic said stolen funds from the $1.5 billion Bybit hack in February 2025 were converted to USDT on Tron and cashed out through suspected Chinese over-the-counter trading services. Crystal Intelligence said that during the $6.3 billion Binance hack on October 29, hackers swapped approximately $234 million in USDT for Tron's native token TRX before Tether froze the remaining USDT in two wallets linked to the theft. The FBI attributed both hacks to North Korea, and Kim Yo Jong rejected the Binance attribution in a statement published by North Korean state media on November 3.