Binance logo displayed on a phone screen and representation of cryptocurrency are seen in this illustration photo taken in Krakow, Poland on February 16, 2022. (Photo illustration by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
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In a small win for law enforcement, Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, recently transferred 318,000 USDT (Tether USD), a cryptocurrency pegged to the value of the U.S. dollar — worth about the same amount in US currency — to an account controlled by the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s office.
Rick Jenkins, a detective with the Gilroy Police Department, a city south of San Jose, wrote in a May 13 search warrant affidavit obtained by Forbes that “an unknown suspect” met a victim on a dating website, and eventually “tricked the victim” into investing over $243,000 worth of USDT into a fake cryptocurrency exchange.
The seizure marks the first time that romance scam-related cryptocurrency losses have been recovered in this Silicon Valley county, according to Erin West, a veteran prosecutor with the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office. Authorities are now beginning the process of returning the seized funds to victims.
The seizure shows that regardless of a cryptocurrency exchange’s jurisdiction — Binance is based in the Cayman Islands — even multi-national crypto firms comply with federal and local regulatory and legal requirements.
According to the…
