Tron, Tether and blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis announced a joint task force on Thursday to identify and disrupt illicit activity involving the USDT (USDT) stablecoin on the Tron blockchain.

The initiative, dubbed the Digital Crime Task Force, will use Chainalysis' data and AI-powered tools to flag suspicious activity and provide law enforcement with leads to trace and freeze funds, according to an announcement shared with Cointelegraph. The combination brings together the stablecoin's issuer, the blockchain operator and an analytics firm under a single effort, pairing issuer-level freezing with on-chain detection.

The launch follows the quiet dissolution of the T3 Financial Crime Unit, which Tron and Tether formed with TRM Labs in 2024. Bloomberg reported on Nov. 4 that the unit disbanded in late August, and an unnamed source cited by the outlet said slow responses and poor coordination hampered its work. The new task force reunites the same issuer and blockchain operator with Chainalysis in place of TRM Labs as the analytics partner. Cointelegraph contacted Tether, Tron and TRM Labs for comment but did not receive responses by publication time; any reply could clarify the circumstances of the disbanding and the transition to a new analytics partner.

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The new task force's priorities include investment and romance scams, crypto theft, terrorist financing, North Korean cyber operations and cartel money laundering.

"Criminals are using AI to move faster than ever, and waiting for a victim to report a crime is no longer good enough," Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said in the announcement. Ardoino also put Tether's cumulative USDT freezes at more than $7 billion.

How criminal networks use USDT on Tron

USDT on Tron accounted for 99.9% of the $1.07 billion in crypto received by 34 casinos in Sihanoukville, a Cambodian city known as a hub for scam compounds, from Jan. 1 to Sept. 7, according to a TRM Labs report. Casinos tied to US-sanctioned networks received $687 million of those inflows, with TRM Labs citing low fees and deep liquidity as reasons for the widespread use of USDT on Tron in the region.

Illicit actors have also used the network to move criminal proceeds. After the $1.5 billion Bybit hack in February 2025, stolen funds were converted into USDT on Tron and cashed out through suspected Chinese over-the-counter trading services, according to blockchain intelligence firm Elliptic. During the record $6.3 billion Binance hack on Oct. 29, hackers swapped approximately $234 million in USDT for Tron's native token (TRX) before Tether froze the remaining USDT in two wallets linked to the theft, according to Crystal Intelligence. Together, the cases illustrate the narrow window in which early detection and issuer freezes can intercept illicit stablecoin flows before they are converted or cashed out — the dynamic the Digital Crime Task Force is built to address.

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation attributed both hacks to North Korea. In a statement published by North Korean state media on Nov. 3, Kim Yo Jong rejected the Binance attribution and cited Bybit as another case in which she said Washington tried to blame Pyongyang.

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