T3 Financial Crime Unit has frozen up to $250 million in criminal assets in less than a year, including the $100 million in USDT locked at the beginning of this year.
By Godfrey Benjamin
Editor Hamza Tariq
Updated
3 mins read
The T3 Financial Crime Unit has collaborated with law enforcement agencies on five continents to freeze over $250 million in criminal assets in less than a year.
Paolo Ardoino, the CEO of Tether, believes that this result underscores what the joint effort between agencies and crypto firms is capable of producing.
T3 was launched in September 2024, less than a year ago, as a joint initiative by Tron TRX $0.35 24h volatility: 1.3% Market cap: $33.07 B Vol. 24h: $1.13 B , Tether, and blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs.
Its core targets include preventing investment scams, illicit drug operations, terrorism-related financial crimes, and hacks, among others. In this short time, it has successfully seized up to $250 million in crypto crime assets.
This includes the $100 million in USDT frozen at the beginning of this year. Once the bloc had evidence that the funds were proceeds of illicit activities, they immediately swung into action, freezing the holding.
It achieved this $250 million milestone in alliance with global law enforcement. Together, they focused on suspicious cases of money laundering, scams, and other crimes.
These entities were monitoring over $3 billion in transactions at some point. So far, T3 has salvaged funds from different high-profile scams like “pig butchering” and even some organized crime networks in Europe.
Amidst the celebration of its milestone, T3 is already working on the launch of “T3+,” a new public-private collaboration program.
Through T3+, the #T3FCU will work more closely with exchanges, financial institutions, and other stakeholders to improve monitoring capabilities, speed communications and collaboration, and multiply the ability to address illicit activity more effectively across the entire… pic.twitter.com/pLYpKfAKbw
— T3 Financial Crime Unit (@T3_FCU) August 12, 2025
It is designed to speed up cross-border investigations, and the platform plans to achieve this by bringing exchanges, financial institutions, and other stakeholders into real-time enforcement efforts.
Leading cryptocurrency exchange Binance is the first partner member for this new initiative that is ultimately aimed at boosting enforcement.
Generally, the crypto industry has been hit by several scams and attacks over the last few months.
These bad actors leverage different tactics to carry out their illicit activities. Almost two weeks ago, decentralized liquidity protocol Aave AAVE $312.2 24h volatility: 4.0% Market cap: $4.75 B Vol. 24h: $545.00 M suffered an attack on its platform. This was just shortly after it announced that it had surpassed $60 billion in net deposits.
According to certain security researchers who looked into the matter, the scammer launched the phishing attack against Aave users via Google Ads. This was the same strategy used by fraudsters who impersonated Revoke Cash, a crypto recovery service aimed at helping traders recover lost assets.
Indian cryptocurrency exchange CoinDCX was also hacked recently. Bengaluru police explained that the hackers in the $44 million crypto heist posed as recruiters to lure a CoinDCX software engineer, Rahul Agarwal, into installing malware on his company laptop.
This singular action gave them access to the backend. Despite this trend of scams, law enforcement agencies are rising to the occasion and making sure that these criminals are caught and made to pay for what they stole.
Disclaimer: Coinspeaker is committed to providing unbiased and transparent reporting. This article aims to deliver accurate and timely information but should not be taken as financial or investment advice. Since market conditions can change rapidly, we encourage you to verify information on your own and consult with a professional before making any decisions based on this content.
Benjamin Godfrey is a blockchain enthusiast and journalist who relishes writing about the real life applications of blockchain technology and innovations to drive general acceptance and worldwide integration of the emerging technology. His desire to educate people about cryptocurrencies inspires his contributions to renowned blockchain media and sites.
