T3 FCU Freezes Over $450M in Illicit Crypto Assets

The T3 Financial Crime Unit, a partnership between Tether, the TRON blockchain and TRM Labs, announced it has frozen more than $450 million in cryptocurrency assets linked to illicit activity worldwide since its launch in 2024.

The unit, which coordinates with law enforcement agencies across 23 jurisdictions including the United States, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, Bulgaria, Brazil and the United Kingdom, supports investigations into a range of crimes. These include exchange hacks and exploits, activities tied to North Korea-linked entities, terrorist financing, drug trafficking, money laundering, sanctions evasion, kidnappings, extortion and physical attacks on cryptocurrency holders known as wrench attacks. In 2025, the unit intercepted 43.9 percent more illicit proceeds than the previous year, according to its statement.

T3 FCU began as a communication and blocklisting framework targeting suspicious transfers of Tether's USDT stablecoin on the TRON network, which hosts a significant portion of circulating USDT. It has since expanded into a broader global enforcement mechanism, analyzing millions of blockchain transactions across five continents. The group can identify and...