Tether, the issuer of the world’s most widely used dollar-linked stablecoin, has been publicly thanked by the US Department of Justice for helping investigators disrupt a sprawling marketplace accused of supporting crypto fraud and money laundering.
The company said on September 11, 2026, that the DOJ’s Scam Center Strike Force credited its “proactive assistance” after more than $52 million in digital assets was restrained in a single coordinated sweep.
The target was Xinbi Guarantee, a Chinese-language platform that authorities say operated mainly on Telegram.
Officials allege the marketplace linked scam operators with vendors who supplied money-laundering services, fake investment websites, and recruitment of people to work in overseas scam compounds.
Investigators also said they followed funds belonging to US victims to vendors connected to the same network.
In the operation, authorities seized two wallets that Xinbi allegedly used to collect vendor payments of about $12 million.
They also moved to restrain 47 additional wallets believed to be tied to laundering.
Combined, those steps produced the $52 million figure announced by the strike force.
Tether’s ability to freeze tokens at the contract level is what made that speed possible once investigators identified the addresses.
The case sits inside a broader US campaign against industrial-scale crypto investment fraud, often run from compounds in Southeast Asia and frequently involving so-called pig-butchering schemes.
Those operations mix romance or confidence tactics with fake trading platforms, then move proceeds through stablecoins.
Because USDT can be blacklisted by its issuer, law enforcement has repeatedly asked Tether to lock wallets while forfeiture cases proceed.
Tether used the announcement to recap its cooperation record.
It said it has worked with more than 340 agencies in 67 countries on over 2,800 matters, including more than 1,600 involving US authorities.
Those efforts, the company claims, have contributed to freezing more than $5 billion in assets linked to suspected crime, of which more than $2.5 billion involved US partners.
Recent US actions it cited include roughly $225 million tied to a trafficking and romance-scam syndicate, nearly $61 million connected to a large investment fraud scheme, and more than $344 million frozen with OFAC and other federal agencies.
The public credit from the DOJ is notable because it frames Tether not merely as a compliant issuer responding to warrants, but as an active investigative partner.
That posture has become part of the company’s public identity as critics continue to scrutinize how widely USDT is used in illicit markets.
Tether argues that blockchain transparency plus issuer-level controls give police tools that traditional banks cannot match at the same speed.For victims, a freeze is only a first step.
Restrained coins still have to move through civil forfeiture and restitution.
Past pig butchering cases show that process can take months or years, and not every frozen dollar ends up returned to the original account holder.
Still, removing $52 million from a vendor marketplace that allegedly sold the infrastructure of fraud is a concrete disruption of the supply chain behind those scams.
The Xinbi action also underlines how Telegram channels and stablecoin wallets have become core infrastructure for transnational fraud groups. Seizing channels and blacklisting addresses does not end the industry, but it raises the cost of doing business and forces operators to rebuild payment rails. Tether’s latest acknowledgment from the Justice Department is another data point in that cat-and-mouse contest.