Tether, TRON and Chainalysis Launch a Task Force to Freeze Illicit USDT Before It Moves

Tether, the TRON blockchain and Chainalysis on Thursday announced the Digital Crime Task Force (DCTF), a private-sector group set up to spot illicit activity involving USDT, Tether’s dollar-pegged stablecoin, on TRON and get the money frozen before criminals can move it.

Instead of waiting for a victim to come forward, the group plans to look for suspected criminal activity itself, turn what it finds into leads for law enforcement, and coordinate with agencies on investigations and asset freezes, according to the announcement. It will also take tips and freeze requests from police.

Speed is a gap incident responders have pointed to before. Jonty, founder of Pangolin Intelligence and a contributor to the SEAL 911 hack-response group, said on Unchained in October that his team traced funds from a drain of Ledger wallets and worked with Tether and police on a freeze of about $10 million. Had the industry been able to “secure those freezes more quickly,” he said, it could have saved “a lot of money.”

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Chainalysis will contribute its investigators, blockchain data and investigative tools powered by artificial intelligence (AI). The founders said the group will go after investment and romance scams, hacks and stolen funds, and drug trafficking, as well as money moving for terrorist groups, North Korean hackers and cartels, and activity tied to child sexual abuse material.

The companies tied the launch to AI-driven fraud. In a January report, Chainalysis found that scams with onchain links to AI vendors took in $3.2 million per operation on average in 2025, about 4.5 times the haul of those without such links, and that impersonation scams grew more than 1,400% from 2024.

“Criminals are using AI to move faster than ever, and waiting for a victim to report a crime is no longer good enough,” said Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether, in the announcement. Ardoino said Tether has frozen more than $7 billion linked to crime in cooperation with police agencies, more than 360 of them, across 73 countries.

“As digital finance reaches more people, the ability to protect them must grow with it,” said Justin Sun, founder of TRON, in the announcement.

The DCTF follows the T3 Financial Crime Unit, which TRON and Tether set up with blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs in September 2024 and which was disbanded in late August, Bloomberg reported on Nov. 4. In May, T3 said it had frozen more than $450 million in illicit assets.

Related Listen: New US Rules Could Force Coinbase to Delist Tether

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