A Jerusalem family that lost relatives in a 1997 Hamas suicide bombing is among the plaintiffs pushing a US federal court to order Tether to hand over hundreds of millions in frozen digital currency.
The case, filed in Manhattan, could set a significant legal precedent for how courts treat centralized stablecoin issuers.
A Decades-Old DebtNow they are targeting a pile of frozen cryptocurrency as a way to collect what they are owed.
The plaintiffs are not asking Tether to simply release those specific wallets. According to reports, they want a court order directing Tether to transfer an equivalent amount of USDT to their legal team’s wallet address.
Because a prior order already froze the wallets — something only possible because Tether has direct operational control — he contends the company can also be ordered to move the funds.
Broader Legal CampaignThis is not Gerstein’s only case of this kind. Based on reports, he has filed similar actions involving North Korea-linked cyber operations against the Arbitrum platform. He is also handling a separate case involving Railgun DAO, a privacy-focused crypto protocol.
The Manhattan filing is part of what appears to be a coordinated legal push to test whether courts can compel crypto platforms with centralized control to act on frozen assets held in sanctioned wallets.
Featured image from CEPA, chart from TradingView
