In summary
- The US Department of Justice has presented a civil confiscation action to recover more than $ 500,000 in USDT of an Iranian citizen.
- According to the Department of Justice, Mohammad Abedini is the founder of the Iranian firm, which supplies the technology used in the Shahed military drones of Iran.
- It was said that the USDT tokens remained in a cryptocurrency wallet without being prostrate, asking questions about how the seizure could be made.
The United States prosecutor for the Massachusetts district has presented a civil confiscation action to recover approximately $ 584,741 in Tether (USDT) Stablecoins of an Iranian citizen who provided technology to the Iranian army.
It was said that the tokens remained in a cryptocurrency without level walletAlthough the authorities gave no more details.
Mohammad Abedini, 39, is a founder and managing director of San’at Danesh Rahpooyan Aflak Co. (ARDS), an Iranian company that supplies technology used in drones for the country’s military.
ARDS provides navigation equipment to the company produced by Shahed drones, which have been widely used in Iran drone attacks, by Russia in the war in Ukraine and by several military groups of the Middle East.
In January 2024, three members of the US service were killed in a military base in northern Jordan. The subsequent analysis revealed that an Iranian UAV Shahed using the sepehr navigation system of ARDS was responsible for the attack, according to the Department of Justice.
Abedini is accused of providing material support for foreign terrorist organizations resulting in death, as well as conspiring to obtain sensitive United States technology used in military drones. He was arrested by the Italian authorities in December 2024, but was launched in January 2025. According to the Department of Justice, it is now believed that he is in Iran.
According to the statements of the non -profit organization Iran Watch, from 2016 to 2024, Abedini and his commercial partner allegedly went on smuggling of US electronics and the technical data of US manufacturers and re -exported them from Switzerland to Iran. Because the devices were so small, according to reports, they could have been taken in a suitcase. These accusations have not yet been tested.
Can the government seize the cryptography of private wallets?
Taking advantage of private wallets cryptographic is not easy. Unlike centralized Exchanges as Coinbase either BinanceThere are no intermediaries for governments to oblige: the owners of the matrices control their own keys. However, the United States government has managed to do it before.
In 2022, the Department of Justice seized 94,000 BTC (with a value of approximately $ 3.6 billion at that time) of Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan, who carried out the Bitfinex record.
According to the announcement, the researchers tracked theft Bitcoin Through multiple mixers and finally located the couple’s private keys after obtaining access to a cloud storage account online.
In other cases, federal researchers have carried out digital forensics on confiscated portable computers to obtain private keys, as in the case of the founder of Silk Road, Ross Ulbricht.
Daily report Information sheet
Start every day with the main news at this time, in addition to original characteristics, a podcast, videos and more.
