Tether Executives Facing Criminal Bank Fraud Charges: Report
The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating Tether for a possible offense conducted years ago, Bloomberg reported Monday.
Jul 26, 2021 at 1:24 p.m. UTCUpdated Aug 21, 2021 at 6:33 p.m. UTC
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Executives from Tether are potentially facing a criminal probe into bank fraud, Bloomberg reported Monday.
- The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating Tether for a possible offense conducted years ago, the outlet reported citing people with knowledge of the matter.
- The price of bitcoin dipped on the news, falling about $1,000 shortly after the report came out.
- Tether, which administers USDT, the crypto market's largest stablecoin, has long been dogged by accusations of murky banking relationships.
- Tether and its sister exchange Bitfinex settled an investigation by the New York Attorney General's Office (NYAG) into whether the stablecoin issuer was covering up the loss of nearly $1 billion in customer funds earlier this year.
- In the settlement agreement, the NYAG said Tether used various banks, but was suspended from some, including Wells Fargo, for unspecified reasons.
- Bloomberg previously reported in 2018 that the DOJ was investigating whether Tether and Bitfinex were pumping bitcoin's price.
- Tether did not immediately answer CoinDesk's request for comment, but in a blog post after this article was published, seemingly implied the Bloomberg story was wrong without quite saying so.
- "Tether routinely has open dialogue with law enforcement agencies, including the U.S. Department of Justice, as part of our commitment to cooperation, transparency, and accountability," the statement said.
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UPDATE (July 26, 2021, 16:31 UTC): Updated with additional context and a statement from Tether.
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