Tether, Tron and Chainalysis launch a task force to freeze criminal USDT faster, months after their T3 crime unit with TRM Labs folded

Tether and Tron are rebuilding their crime-fighting alliance with a new partner. Tron, Tether and blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis on Thursday announced a Digital Crime Task Force aimed at illicit activity involving Tether's USDT on the Tron blockchain, The Block and crypto.news reported.

The group says it wants to cut the time between spotting suspicious transfers and acting on the wallets involved, so that money can be frozen before criminals move it on. It names investment and romance scams, hacks, terrorist financing and North Korean cyberattacks as targets. Chainalysis supplies the tracing tools; Tether, as issuer, can freeze tokens at flagged addresses.

The task force follows the T3 Financial Crime Unit, which Tron and Tether formed with TRM Labs in September 2024 and which said in May it had frozen more than $450 million. Bloomberg reported on November 4 that the partnership had been dissolved after slow responses and poor coordination, according to crypto.news. Chainalysis now takes TRM Labs' place as analytics partner, though Tether will keep working with TRM Labs on other projects.

"Criminals are using AI to move faster than ever, and waiting for a victim to report a crime is no longer good enough," Tether chief executive Paolo Ardoino said. Chainalysis has found that AI-linked scam operations took in about 4.5 times more revenue each in 2025 than scams with no identified link to AI vendors. No new freezes were disclosed with the launch.