Tether froze USDT on 131 Tron addresses after OFAC added them to its sanctions list

Tether froze USDT on 131 addresses in the Tron network after the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) added those wallets to its special sanctions list, linking them to the terrorist group ISIS-K. For high-risk PSPs, the point is simple: when a stablecoin issuer acts on OFAC designations, funds on-chain can be frozen at the issuer level even if the blockchain itself keeps running.

1. The exact amount of frozen USDT was not disclosed. Chainalysis said more than $1.4 million passed through the listed wallets since 2023, and more than $880,000 had already been withdrawn before the restrictions took effect, mostly through underground crypto exchanges in Syria.
2. Analysts estimated that about $520,000 may still have been sitting on the addresses at the time of the freeze, but neither Tether nor the U.S. Treasury confirmed that figure.
3. According to Chainalysis, crypto donations were coordinated by ISIS-K’s Al-Azaim Media Foundation. The group used its own websites and closed messenger channels to publish wallet addresses for transfers.
4. Security researchers said the address operators mixed illicit transactions with ordinary transfers through popular crypto services and regulated exchanges, which helped disguise the source of funds and reduce the chance of detection. Chainalysis said the wallets showed a high level of interaction with legitimate crypto infrastructure.
5. OFAC also added three Monero addresses to the sanctions list. Chainalysis noted that the assets on those addresses cannot be frozen, because Monero has no centralized issuer or built-in mechanism for forced freezes.

Separately, analysts at the Russian platform CoinKyt said Tether froze about 1.49 billion USDT on Tron in the first six months of 2026, with most of the frozen funds tied to sanctions enforcement, court orders, and law enforcement requests.