DOJ's $225M USDT pig butchering seizure (2025)

Officials called it the largest US seizure tied to pig butchering scams, and it started with a tip from a crypto exchange. On 18 June 2025, the Justice Department filed a civil forfeiture complaint in Washington, DC, against more than $225.3 million in Tether's USDT stablecoin. It says the money came from crypto investment scams and was laundered through a web of wallets. Officials called it the largest crypto seizure in Secret Service history. The complaint lists about 430 suspected victims. Status: Civil forfeiture complaint filed, final outcome not reported.

What happened

OKX and Tether noticed something odd: about 144 OKX accounts, linked to IP addresses in the Philippines, had moved around $3 billion in crypto over a year. The government later called it high-volume money laundering. In 2023, according to court documents, they flagged it to the US Secret Service.

Investigators from the Secret Service and FBI field offices in San Francisco then traced funds from victims of crypto confidence scams across a large spread of blockchain addresses. The operators had split the money over hundreds of thousands of transactions to hide where it came from. The trail ended at more than $225.3 million in USDT, and the Justice Department filed to forfeit it (case 25-cv-01907-AHA, District of Columbia).

The complaint mentions some individuals in its factual allegations. But a civil forfeiture action is brought against property. It doesn't charge anyone with a crime, so no one is named here.

The numbers, and what they mean

One more thing the record doesn't show: that the money has been finally forfeited, or that any victim has been paid back.

Tip: if you were scammed, keep every wallet address and transaction ID. Recovery is never guaranteed, but cases like this one are built from that trail.

The scam behind the money

The funds came from pig butchering, the slow-build investment con. It usually goes like this:

• a stranger gets in touch through a messaging app, social media, a dating app or a "wrong number" text
• a friendship or romance grows over time
• talk turns to a crypto platform showing fat, rising balances
• small early withdrawals are sometimes allowed, to build trust
• then bigger and bigger deposits, until the money is gone

The Justice Department said more than 400 people lost money thinking they were making real investments. It asked other victims to report to the FBI's IC3 using complaint code BT06182025.

What stops it

• Investment tips from someone you only know online? Assume fraud.
• Check the person, the platform and the wallet address yourself, before sending anything.
• Get a second opinion from someone outside the relationship.
• If it goes wrong, save wallet addresses and transaction records, then contact the exchange and law enforcement quickly.
• Exchanges and stablecoin issuers: this case shows what flagging suspicious accounts early can do.

See also the Simex domain seizure and the Dubai scam compound takedown.

Common questions