The United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts filed a civil forfeiture action Monday seeking to recover 327,829.72 USDT allegedly involved in a money laundering scheme linked to an online romance scam.
Justice Department targets cryptocurrency laundering in online romance scam
The complaint, filed in federal court, names the cryptocurrency as property of the defendant and seeks its forfeiture under federal law as proceeds of fraud and laundering.
According to the complaint, the stolen funds came from a Massachusetts resident who was targeted in late 2024 on a dating app. The fraudster, identified only by a pseudonym, convinced the victim to send funds for purported cryptocurrency investments that never existed.
Rather than investing the money, the fraudsters diverted it through a series of cryptocurrency wallets and ultimately converted it to USDT, a common tactic to mask the origin and movement of illicit proceeds.
Several of the wallets in question were seized by law enforcement in August 2025 after a blockchain analysis traced links to the scam.
Under U.S. civil forfeiture law, property related to illegal activity can be seized by the government and ultimately returned to victims if the court finds it to be the proceeds of a crime. The Justice Department’s action allows third parties with a legitimate interest in the property to file claims before a forfeiture is finalized.
Prosecutors said the forfeiture complaint was part of broader efforts to target online frauds, including romance scams, investment schemes and financial cybercrime that increasingly exploit cryptocurrency to move and hide funds.
The case highlights both the growing sophistication of crypto-related fraud and law enforcement’s growing use of blockchain analytics to trace and recover stolen digital assets for fraud victims.