The Financial Times recently reported that the USDT stablecoin has become a popular tool among scammers and money launderers, according to a report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.
The asset is increasingly being used in romance scams, pig butchering schemes, and the Southeast Asian black market for online casinos.
The UN stated that organized crime has created a secondary banking system using new technologies, with the growth of unregulated online casinos and the use of cryptocurrency further strengthening their criminal ecosystem.
The report’s authors attribute the stablecoin’s appeal to its “fast and irreversible” transactions, along with the weak regulation of the cryptocurrency market, making it easier for attackers to operate.
This allows criminal groups to use USDT as a means to move funds, and some casinos have even started to specialize in handling the token.
In Myanmar and Cambodia, one syndicate placed street advertisements offering the exchange of “black” tokens for cash. Tether, the company behind USDT, has not yet provided a comment on the situation.
