US Seeks $61M in Crypto Tied to Black-Market Iranian Oil Sales
The US Department of Justice is seeking to seize $61 million in cryptocurrency that allegedly originated from black-market sales of Iranian crude oil. According to a civil forfeiture complaint filed by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, two China-based firms, Blessed Trust and Hexa Whale, used Binance trading accounts to funnel money to Iran and its proxies. The complaint targets the cryptocurrency itself rather than Binance, which has denied any wrongdoing and claims it never permitted sanctioned transactions.
The investigation found that a cluster of unhosted wallets, labeled Entity A, handled over $1.5 billion in illicit oil revenue, with some of that money being pushed towards an Iranian exchange and businesses tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a US-designated terrorist organization.
Deputy U.S. Attorney Sean S. Buckley stated that the case aims to 'deprive the Government of Iran and its terrorist proxies of the illegal money' they rely on for funding their military, nuclear program, and ballistic missile work.