TL;DR
The T3 Unit has frozen around $100 million in USDT from illicit activities since its creation in September.
The largest source of frozen funds comes from money laundering as a service, where criminals hire entities on the dark web to clean illicit funds.
Up to $3 million of the frozen funds are linked to illicit activities connected to North Korea.
The fight against financial crime in the cryptocurrency world took a significant step forward with the freezing of over $100 million in Tether (USDT) by the T3 Financial Crime Unit. This unit, created through a collaboration between the Tron blockchain, stablecoin issuer Tether, and blockchain intelligence company TRM Labs, was launched in September with the goal of combatting illicit activities within the crypto ecosystem.
To achieve this, millions of transactions across five continents were analyzed, with a volume exceeding $3 billion in USDT. The unit has focused its efforts on identifying funds related to money laundering, investment scams, drug trafficking, and terrorism financing, among other crimes.
The Impact of Money Laundering and the Fight Against Organized Crime
According to Chris Janczewski, head of global investigations at TRM Labs, money laundering as a service, where criminals hire services on the dark web to “clean” illicit funds, has been the largest source of frozen funds.
“Blockchain is a bad place to do money laundering because it’s so transparent. We can confirm victim reports on a public blockchain and even identify other victims, a level of insight that just isn’t possible with traditional finance”,
Janczewski stated.
One of the most concerning findings was that up to $3 million in frozen USDT was linked to illicit activities tied to North Korea, a country that has tried to infiltrate crypto projects to fund its regime. In December, the U.S. Department of the Treasury dismantled a North Korean money laundering network.
The T3 Unit aims for its efforts to not only recover funds for victims but also to serve as a strong and clear warning to criminals, effectively deterring them from engaging in illicit activities within blockchain ecosystems such as Tron, while promoting a safer, more transparent, and trustworthy digital financial environment for everyone involved.