A new report shows that the Tether (USDT) stablecoin is widely used in illegal activities. It shows that illegal wallets have gotten over $11 billion in the last three years.
Elliptic, a company that studies blockchains, found that Tether was the main way people paid on Huione Guarantee, a website that helps hackers and their clients do business.
The study shows that USDT is involved in scams and money laundering, especially pig butchering schemes. In pig butchering scams, con artists get people to trust them by acting like they are personally interested in them and then convince them to put all of their life savings into fake cryptocurrency schemes.
Criminals can hire services on Huione Guarantee to do things like make fake investing websites and use AI software to trick people. Many of the people who fall for these scams are also taken advantage of.
They are often lured to Southeast Asian countries with claims of good jobs that pay well. Once they get there, they are jailed, made to work in terrible conditions, and their passports are taken away.
Tether’s Role In Crime
According to Elliptic’s research, Huione Guarantee even sells devices that are used to torture forced workers. Some of these workers end their own lives or die in strange ways. The report says there is “overwhelming evidence” that Huione Guarantee is a shady market that is linked to a significant Cambodian company with ties to the prime minister of the country.
Even so, Elliptic pointed out that the openness of blockchain technology makes it possible to watch and stop USDT flows to stop illegal activities. After the study, Elliptic’s tools have marked hundreds of cryptocurrency addresses that are linked to Huione Guarantee.
The report also says that there is more and more proof that Tether is used in illegal actions in China, which does not allow cryptocurrencies. In May, a significant criminal group that helped people send illegal money to other countries was caught. They had moved $1.9 billion.
The UN has also brought attention to the problem, pointing out that cybercriminals in the region like using USDT on Justin Sun’s TRON blockchain because it is stable, anonymous, and has low transaction fees.
More than $17 billion worth of Tether was tied to illegal trades, underground exchanges, and other crimes over the course of a year. Tether has also been asked for as a ransom in kidnapping cases. For example, in a recent capture in Hong Kong, the kidnappers asked for $640,000 in USDT.
A report from TRM Labs shows that Tether is linked to illegal acts even more. It says that 1.63% of USDT trades are connected to crime, while only 0.05% of USDC trades are. This has also changed how terrorism is funded, with a lot more TRON-based Tether transactions being used to fund terror operations.
The results show how widely Tether is used by criminals, which is very frightening. They also show how important it is to keep an eye on things and put rules in place for cryptocurrencies.
