Tether frozen $42.4 million in advance three months before USDT was indicted by Thai businessmen

On 4 September, Nutthawat Rukthammalalern and Natthawat Kasamvilas, two Thai businessmen, filed a lawsuit in the Federal Court of the Southern District of New York against Tther, the stabilizer, for blacklisting 42,417,785.62 USDT. The suit was filed on 31 August and resubmitted the following day. According to the chain records, these 10 Taifeng addresses were frozen in bulk in two minutes and a half on 30 October 2025, while the seizure order invoked in the proceedings was dated 19 February 2026, more than three months apart. The plaintiff claimed to have purchased USDT in the secondary market, which had no contractual relationship with Tether. The application stated that Tether had acted at the informal request of the United States Government, through the agents of the Homeland Security Investigation Agency (HSI), prior to the issuance of the seizure order, and had informed Kasamvilas on 2 November 2025 that it had “no further information”, without disclosing that it had frozen its own funds. Five applications for damages, including conversion, appropriation of movable property, improper enrichment, were filed by four companies, namely, Tether Holdings, Tether International, Tether Operations and Tether Investments, and were heard by Judge Lewis J. Liman. Tether had previously indicated that its cooperation with law enforcement authorities had cumulatively frozen over $4.4 billion in assets, of which more than $2.1 billion related to United States authorities。