Two entrepreneurs from Thailand have filed a lawsuit against the issuer of the USDT stablecoin, Tether, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The reason is the blocking of $42.4 million in tokens, which, according to the plaintiffs, was carried out without proper legal grounds.
According to the case materials, the asset freeze occurred in October 2025. The businessmen insist that Tether acted not on the basis of an official warrant, but allegedly on an informal request from the U.S. Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). This request, it is claimed, was linked to an investigation into a large-scale fraud scheme known as "pig butchering," with an alleged loss of $61 million.
Notably, the official warrant for asset seizure was issued by the authorities of the Eastern District of North Carolina only several months later—in February 2026. Thus, the key issue in the case is not the connection of the funds to illicit activity, which the plaintiffs apparently do not dispute, but the legitimacy of Tether's actions themselves.
The plaintiffs question the issuer's authority to unilaterally block funds without a court order. This raises a broader question about the role of centralized stablecoin issuers in the global financial system: how far does their right to act on "gentlemen's" agreements with regulators extend, and does this violate the rights of asset holders.
Expert Analysis
This case is an important precedent for the entire industry. If the court rules in favor of the plaintiffs, Tether and other issuers will be forced to reconsider their procedures for interacting with law enforcement agencies. However, it should not be forgotten: if the funds are indeed linked to fraud, then even in the absence of a warrant at the time of the freeze, the company acted in line with the logic of protecting the ecosystem from criminal flows. The question is only where good faith ends and an abuse of authority begins. The court's decision could set the direction for all enforcement practices in the digital asset sphere for years to come.