Two Thai Businessmen Sue Tether Over a $42.4M USDT Freeze

Two Thai businessmen have sued Tether in New York over $42.4 million of USDT the company froze in October 2025. Nutthawat Rukthammachalern and Natthawat Kasamvilas filed the complaint on 31 August in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. They say Tether blacklisted ten Ethereum addresses at the informal request of a Homeland Security Investigations agent, and that no seizure warrant covering the funds existed until 19 February 2026. Seven accounts of the filing reviewed for this piece carry the same two dates. The interval between them is 112 days.

What the blacklist does

USDT on Ethereum carries a function called addBlackList, which lets the issuer stop an address from moving its tokens. It is a contract-level power, exercised by Tether alone, and it works whether or not anyone has been to court. The complaint does not dispute that the function exists. Its argument is about authority. Technical control over a token is not the same as a legal right over the holdings of people who bought it on the open market and have no relationship with the issuer. That is the question the case puts in front of a judge, and it is narrower than the headline figure suggests.

Three claims and a request about the yield

The suit pleads conversion, trespass to chattels and unjust enrichment, and asks for declaratory and injunctive relief. The plaintiffs want the addresses taken off the blacklist and an order stopping Tether from destroying the tokens. They also want the income the company earned on the reserves backing the frozen USDT while it sat frozen, plus damages and punitive damages. That last request is the unusual one. Tether holds Treasuries against the tokens in circulation, and KPMG US signed an unqualified opinion on those accounts for 2025. Blockonomi, alone among the seven accounts located, prints a line from the filing itself.

"No judicial warrant, court directive, or subpoena existed to authorize Tether's action at the moment of the freeze," the complaint said.

The dates agree, the descriptions do not

Every account gives 30 October 2025 for the freeze and 19 February 2026 for warrant 5:26-MJ-1267-JG, issued by a magistrate judge in the Eastern District of North Carolina. What the interval is called varies. CoinDesk writes nearly three and a half months, Bitcoin.com News and Blockonomi say nearly four, and TFTC counts 112 days. The arithmetic settles it at 112. The spread comes from rounding, not from any dispute about the record. The wider action behind it is agreed too. Federal prosecutors announced a seizure of about $61 million in USDT tied to an investigation into pig-butchering fraud, the confidence scheme in which victims are talked into fake investments over weeks or months. Coinpedia dates that announcement to 24 February 2026 and Blockonomi puts Tether's acknowledgement of its cooperation on 25 February; CoinDesk and crypto.news give the $61 million with no date at all. Both February dates stand single-sourced.

Nothing has been tested

Tether has not filed a response. It had not answered CoinDesk's request for comment when that outlet published on Wednesday, and none of the seven accounts carries a statement from the company. A complaint is one side's account, and none of it has been through a hearing. What the plaintiffs say about themselves is thin as well: no account explains how they came by the tokens, and their own case is that they were caught in a sweep with no evidence directed at them. Coinpedia calls the two men brothers; the surnames differ and the other six accounts say only that they are Thai nationals. On the reserve side Tether is already working against a two-year countdown to GENIUS Act compliance. The blacklist sits outside that statute, and no court has yet said what a private issuer owes the holders it freezes.