A $61 million cryptocurrency forfeiture case has put two Binance accounts at the center of a sanctions fight that was already unfolding months before the Justice Department filed its complaint.
- Federal prosecutors investigate whether Binance knowingly facilitated trading for entities linked to an illicit Iranian oil laundering syndicate.
- The Justice Department targets sixty-one million dollars in frozen Tether assets originating from a broader 1.5-billion-dollar shadow oil network.
- Scrutiny tests Binance compliance operations operating under court-mandated federal monitors following the company's historic 4.3-billion-dollar settlement.
On Sept. 14, the Southern District of New York said Blessed Trust Limited and Hexa Whale Trading Limited had used Binance trading accounts in an alleged network that moved more than $1.5 billion in proceeds from black-market Iranian oil sales. The government is seeking to forfeit about $61 million in USDT held at frozen Tron addresses. Binance is not a defendant in the case.
Eight days later, Bloomberg reported that Manhattan prosecutors and the Justice Department‘s Criminal Division were examining whether Binance knowingly allowed trading that violated U.S. sanctions on Iran. Reuters repeated the report. The Justice Department declined to comment.
The Accounts Were Already Under Review
In February 2026 Binance’s internal investigators had traced about $1.7 billion from the Blessed Trust and Hexa Whale accounts toward a cluster of entities linked to Iran. Binance has disputed that characterization, saying its own tracing found that the funds passed through multiple intermediaries and that at most about $126.1 million reached wallets with links to Iran, including up to $24.1 million that reached wallets linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC. Those figures are Binance’s reconstruction, not a prosecutorial finding.
The Wall Street Journal has described Blessed Trust as a Binance payment-services partner, making its relationship with the exchange different from that of an ordinary retail customer. Binance says authorities first asked about certain Hexa Whale activity in April 2025. The company says it supplied records in June, continued its review and offboarded Hexa Whale on Aug. 13, 2025. A separate review of Blessed Trust followed later that year, and Binance says it removed the firm in January 2026.
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→ Submit a Press ReleaseTether froze the targeted USDT addresses on June 15 and July 26, 2025, while Hexa Whale was still under review and before Binance says it removed Blessed Trust.
What the September Filing Actually Says
The DOJ complaint describes an alleged network called “Entity A,” a group of unhosted cryptocurrency addresses that prosecutors say received and distributed more than approximately $1.5 billion from Iranian oil sales.
According to the complaint, Blessed Trust and Hexa Whale helped move proceeds through cryptocurrency and fiat channels. Prosecutors allege that some of the money was ultimately sent to entities connected to the Iranian government, IRGC-related money services businesses and an Iranian cryptocurrency exchange.
The $61 million targeted in the case is a narrower slice of that network. The USDT was frozen by Tether at 10 Tron addresses, and the forfeiture action concerns those identified addresses, not Binance’s own assets. The complaint names Binance as the exchange where the two firms held trading accounts, but does not charge the exchange with a crime.
Binance’s Record After Its $4.3 Billion Plea
Binance’s 2023 guilty plea provides the earlier compliance backdrop. The exchange admitted violating the Bank Secrecy Act, failing to register as a money-transmitting business and violating sanctions law.
It agreed to forfeit about $2.51 billion and pay a criminal fine of about $1.81 billion, a combined $4.32 billion. The Justice Department said Binance had willfully caused more than $898 million in trades between U.S. users and users ordinarily resident in Iran between January 2018 and May 2022.
Binance also agreed to a three-year independent compliance monitor and strengthened its anti-money-laundering and sanctions programs. FinCEN imposed a separate five-year monitoring arrangement. The 2023 plea covers earlier conduct. It does not establish that Binance violated sanctions in the later transactions described by prosecutors or reported by the media.
Binance says its later compliance work identified and removed the accounts involved. The company also says its tracing showed that the funds did not originate or end at Binance and that the Iran and IRGC connections emerged only after multiple blockchain hops. It says it has a zero-tolerance policy toward sanctions violations and cooperates with law enforcement.
The Justice Department has not publicly said whether Binance will be charged over the newer activity. For now, the public record contains the forfeiture complaint, Binance’s account of its investigations and a Bloomberg report that federal prosecutors are examining whether the exchange knowingly allowed the trading.
What remains outside the public record is the evidence behind that question: what Binance knew, when it knew it and what its investigators did with that information.
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