The U.S. Attorney's Office for Massachusetts has begun legal proceedings to recover virtual currency associated with a scheme dubbed Operation Pig Butchering that killed a Massachusetts resident and 36 others.
The U.S. Attorney's Office announced on March 13 that it aimed to repay $2.3 million to online victims in various cryptocurrencies, including USD Coin (USDC), Tether (USDT), Ether (ETH), and Solana (SOL). A civil forfeiture lawsuit was filed. Fraud and fraud.
A civil forfeiture action is a legal process in which law enforcement seizes assets, such as property or funds, that are suspected of being involved in illegal activity. In such cases, the asset, rather than the individual, is considered the defendant in the legal proceeding.
The cryptocurrencies, including nearly 300,000 USDC, 1.5 million USDT, 102,000 Tron (TRX), 3,000 Sol, and 14,000 Cardano (ADA), were sold in January following an investigation into last spring's “pig butchering” scam. It was seized from two Binance accounts. Lives in Massachusetts.
Pig butchering is a technique by which scammers establish trust online and trick victims into investing in cryptocurrency schemes before they even realize they have been scammed. U.S. regulators have warned investors about this practice and prosecuted some bad actors.
Authorities launched an investigation into the scheme in spring 2023, revealing that cryptocurrencies were seized from funds associated with 37 victims, including individuals in Massachusetts.
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According to the statement, the fraud victim was tricked into transferring $400,000 to the scammers, who moved the funds to other wallets and investigators transferred the funds to 36 other victims. It is said that it was connected to the funds.
The U.S. Attorney's Office's action follows last week's news that the U.S. Attorney's Office in Chicago seized $1.4 million in Tether from an unhosted cryptocurrency wallet in connection with an alleged tech support scam targeting senior citizens. This is almost the same as the following.
Tether actively cooperated with the asset recovery process, destroying funds associated with the accused fraudsters and reallocating them to alternative wallets under government supervision to compensate victims.
In January, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission charged digital asset platform Debiex with fraud and issued a warning for allegedly taking $2.3 million from investors using pig butchering. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network also warned investors when it issued a warning about pig slaughter late last year.
