Tether partners with FBI to recover $1.4M scam targeting seniors

Tether assists the U.S. and FBI in recovering $1.4 million from crypto scams and expands its stablecoin utility with Celo integration.

According to a statement released on March 12, stablecoin issuer Tether cooperated with the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to successfully recover $1.4 million USDT in a technical support fraud case targeting the elderly.

The scammers target vulnerable seniors with deceptive pop-up ads that falsely warn victims that their devices are at risk, enticing them to seek help from purported tech support. .

After contacting the phone number provided, victims fell into the trap of the scammers, who claimed their accounts were compromised. Victims were then directed to individuals posing as bank representatives who forced them to convert their funds into cryptocurrency and transfer them to wallets controlled by the hackers.

Tether said the recovered funds will be returned to victims of the fraud.

Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether, said: “The recovery of $1.4 million worth of Tether (USDT) is an important milestone in our efforts to maintain integrity in an ever-changing industry.”

Notably, this development is consistent with Tether’s ongoing campaign to combat the illicit use of cryptocurrencies by malicious actors. Ardoino emphasized that the company is committed to “protecting users and rooting out illegal activity.”

USDT expanded to Celo platform

Tether’s USDT is also integrated with mobile-focused Layer-1 platform Celo.

This integration brings significant benefits to USDT, such as low transaction fees. At the same time, it also expands the utility of stable assets on Celo, covering remittances, savings, lending, peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions and cross-border payments.

Ardoino describes Celo as an “important new transport layer” due to its low transaction fees and focus on emerging markets. Celo is transitioning to a Layer 2 network built on Ethereum.

cLabs, Celo’s core contributor development team, will propose the use of USDT as a fuel currency within the ecosystem. This move aims to simplify transactions and improve efficiency within decentralized applications (dApps) focused on payments, lending and others.

Interestingly, USDT’s main stablecoin competitor, Circle-issued USDC, similarly expanded to the Celo platform in January.