Conduit sues Tether over allegedly freezing $2.8M without explanation

Conduit Technology filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York alleging that Tether froze $2.76 million in USDt belonging to the company without explanation. According to the complaint, Conduit had placed USDt in its digital treasury wallet beginning in May 2025, and the entire balance was blocked on Sept. 24, 2025. Conduit says the funds are indisputably its property and that Tether has no legal claim to them.

The lawsuit ties the freeze to a Brazilian federal police investigation opened in 2024 into the financial intermediaries Bull Intermediação de Negócios and Onix. Conduit alleges Tether independently identified Conduit’s treasury wallet as connected to those companies “on its own initiative using its own criteria,” and then froze the USDt as part of that linkage. Conduit contends the action was taken without legal justification and has “materially impacted its business.”

Conduit said it repeatedly asked Tether to unfreeze the funds but had not regained access as of the filing. Cointelegraph contacted Tether for comment and did not receive an immediate response, according to the report. The complaint argues Tether may not seize funds from businesses merely because those businesses used Tether’s currency for storage.

The suit follows other litigation targeting Tether’s freezing of customer USDT balances. About a month earlier, two Thai nationals sued Tether after alleging $42.4 million of their USDt was frozen following an informal request from U.S. Homeland Security Investigations; that case involves funds tied to a separate alleged pig-butchering fraud and a seizure warrant issued in February. Tether has also been linked in media reports to large-scale freezing efforts cited by the company, including assistance in freezing USDT it said was linked to Iran.