U.S. federal prosecutors in California have seized tens of millions of dollars from bank accounts and crypto wallets belonging to Capstone, a Montana payment company that conducts business with Tether. According to Reuters, civil forfeiture documents indicate that the company claimed to operate as a technology firm to Wells Fargo and JPMorgan while actually running payment operations.

The seizure amounts to approximately $84.2 million: about $79.11 million from Wells Fargo securities accounts, around $1.86 million at Wells Fargo, about $2.06 million at JPMorgan, and approximately $1.1 to $1.2 million worth of USDT in two wallets. A forfeiture lawsuit was filed in the Eastern District of California on July 15, with most funds withdrawn from the Wells Fargo securities account on September 14.

Prosecutors allege that Capstone processed large remittances for two crypto companies through a licensed digital bank in Dominica, EQIBank, with one account seeing over $700 million in transactions within months, of which approximately $337 million was redistributed to hundreds of counterparties, nearly two-thirds of which are reportedly related to Tether and Bitfinex payments. Capstone is accused of operating money transfers without a license in at least six states.

The same set of accounts has also been linked to a fraud ring impersonating FBI agents to transfer illicit funds and convert them into USDT. Tether confirmed that it is a client of the Dominica bank, stated it was unaware of the allegations against Capstone, and claimed its risk exposure is less than 0.034% of group assets. EQIBank has filed for an emergency unfreeze in California court.

Spokespersons for Wells Fargo and JPMorgan declined to comment. This case targets the dollar clearing channels and intermediary payment processors, not the USDT contracts themselves; the issuer can still cooperate with other cases under existing freezing mechanisms, but this time the focus is on its fiat currency entry and exit channels.

In market mechanics, buyers need to convert stablecoin reserves and redemptions into bank wire transfers through issuers and trading platforms, while sellers are intermediaries willing to open accounts at major U.S. banks and then funnel transactions to offshore banks. The driving event is the prosecutors' seizure of intermediary accounts due to unlicensed transfers and false account openings. Funds flow from agent accounts that can be accessed by U.S. courts to the Treasury; benefiting are banks and prosecutors that can directly prove ownership of the funds, while the stablecoin issuance structure relying on a Montana company for dollar entry and exit is under pressure.

Source: Public Information