The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Massachusetts has filed civil forfeiture measures to recover approximately $584,741 in tether (USDT) stablecoins From the Iranian people who provided technology to the Iranian army.
Tokens are said to be stored in non-bearing cryptocurrencies walletauthorities did not give any further details.
Mohammad Abedini, 39, is the founder and managing director of San’at Danesh Rahpooyan Aflak Co. (SDRA), an Iranian company that provides the technology used in drones to the country’s military.
SDRA is widely used in Iran’s drone strikes and provides navigation equipment to companies producing Shahed drones by Russia in the war in Ukraine, and by several Middle Eastern military groups.
In January 2024, three US service members were killed at a military base in northern Jordan. The DOJ said subsequent analysis revealed that Iranian Shahed UAVs were the source of the attack using SDRA’s Sepehr navigation system.
Abedini has been accused of providing material support to foreign terrorist organizations, resulting in death, and is conspiring to procure sensitive US technology used in military drones. He was detained by Italian authorities in December 2024, but was released in January 2025. According to the DOJ, he is believed to be in Iran at the moment.
According to a request from non-profit Iran Watch from 2016 to 2024, Abedini and his business partners allegedly smuggled US-original electronics and technical data from American manufacturers and re-exported them from Switzerland to Iran. The device is so small that it may have been reportedly carried in a suitcase. These allegations have not been proven yet.
Can the government grab a code from a private wallet?
Grab a crypto from a private wallet is not easy. Unlike centralization exchange Like Coinbase or Binancethere are no intermediaries that the government forces. The owner’s owner controls his keys. But the US government was able to do that before.
In 2022, DOJ seized 94,000 BTC (worth around $3.6 billion at the time) from Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan, who ran a record-breaking Bitfinex hack.
Investigators tracked down the stolen items, according to the announcement. Bitcoin I finally found the couple’s private key after accessing an online cloud storage account through multiple mixers.
In another example, like Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, federal agents performed digital forensics on confiscated laptops to obtain their private keys.
Discover more from Earlybirds Invest
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
