PANews reported on May 15th that, according to CoinDesk, the US law firm Charles Gerstein filed an application in Manhattan federal court seeking an order for Tether to transfer over $344 million worth of frozen USDT to victims holding unpaid terrorism judgments against Iran. This USDT was previously frozen by Tether after the US Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) determined that the relevant Tron wallets belonged to the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The plaintiffs argue that since OFAC has identified the wallets as belonging to the IRGC and Tether has frozen the tokens, Tether can simply reissue an equivalent amount of USDT to wallets controlled by the victims' lawyers.

This case is part of Charles Gerstein's broader legal strategy to leverage the ability of crypto platforms to freeze and transfer digital assets in order to enforce terrorism-related judgments. Unlike the Arbitrum case, which involved North Korean-linked hacking funds, OFAC has designated the relevant wallets as belonging to the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in this case, making the ownership issue clearer. Gerstein has previously deployed similar strategies in the Arbitrum fund freeze case and the Railgun DAO case.