October 13, 2026

Tether froze $2.76M of a payments company. A year later it went to court

On October 6, payments platform Conduit Technology sued Tether in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. The reason: 2.76M USDT frozen in the company's wallet back on September 24, 2025.

WHAT CONDUIT SAYS

• The funds are "unequivocally Conduit's", and the freeze came "with no justification".
• Tether, on its own initiative, linked the wallet to a 2024 Brazilian federal police investigation into Bull Intermediação de Negócios and Onix.
• Every request to unfreeze over the past year was denied. The company asks the court to release the funds.

Tether had not responded to Cointelegraph's request at the time of reporting.

WHAT IT MEANS FOR ANYONE WHO ACCEPTS USDT

It's not only scammers who get frozen. It's enough for a wallet to sit close to an address from someone else's investigation, through a counterparty or an incoming payment. Then come months of emails and, as this shows, sometimes a lawsuit.

The only real protection is not accepting tainted money in the first place:

• check the sender's address before the deal, not after;
• keep the check result: it's your evidence if a freeze happens anyway;
• if frozen, build the source-of-funds file right away, while you still remember your counterparties.

🔎 Check a sender: https://amlconsensus.com/en