US prosecutors seize bank accounts of a payments firm handling Tether flows
The seizure at a Caribbean lender has left funds belonging to the world's largest stablecoin issuer stuck, and the reported size of the action differs between accounts.
Assembled by Claude from 7 sources at 7 outlets · Friday, September 25, 2026, Evening edition, 5:22 PM EDT · no human byline
What happened
US federal prosecutors have seized bank accounts belonging to Capstone, a payments business working on behalf of stablecoin issuer Tether and an affiliated company finextra.comft.com. Capstone was allegedly processing Tether-related wire transfers on behalf of the Caribbean bank EQIBank finance.biggo.com.
The reported size of the action is not consistent. One account put the Justice Department's seizure at $90 million from EQIBank accounts finance.biggo.com. Others described it as an $89 million asset seizure coindesk.comstartupfortune.com. Tether said the funds were taken from a lender seized by US authorities on Thursday coindesk.com.
Tether has moved to contain the read-across. The issuer said it has very little exposure to the lender coindesk.com, and put its own exposure at under $64 million, a fraction of its reserves startupfortune.com. It said any impact on overall reserves would be limited, while acknowledging that the amount ultimately recoverable could depend on the outcome of proceedings financefeeds.com. Tether is the world's largest stablecoin issuer ft.com, and its USDT token is designed always to be worth one US dollar, a promise it keeps by holding reserves investinglive.com.
Why it matters to investors
The episode is about plumbing rather than about the token. A stablecoin's peg depends on reserves that sit in banks, and this case shows those dollars moving through a small offshore lender finance.biggo.com and a third-party payments firm finextra.com rather than through the large institutions that clear most dollar flows.
That concentration creates a specific failure mode. The lender is now described as facing liquidation risk financefeeds.com, and one account says the seizure is pushing EQIBank toward collapse startupfortune.com, which is how a law-enforcement action against one intermediary becomes a recovery question for the issuer.
Tether's own numbers frame the scale as manageable, with exposure put at under $64 million against reserves it describes as far larger startupfortune.comfinancefeeds.com. The discrepancy between the $90 million and $89 million figures now circulating finance.biggo.comcoindesk.com is unresolved in these reports.
What to watch
The first item is what the recoverable amount turns out to be, which Tether itself says depends on how the proceedings resolve financefeeds.com.
The second is EQIBank's status. If the lender is pushed into collapse startupfortune.com, the question widens from one seizure to the fate of every client balance held there.
The third is banking access. The case exposes how much of the stablecoin infrastructure runs through institutions of this size startupfortune.com, and whether larger banks take on that business is what determines if the next seizure has the same effect.
Sources
- ft.com: US seizes bank accounts of payments group linked to Tether - Financial Times (2026-09-25)
- coindesk.com: Tether confirms minimal EQIBank exposure following $89M US asset seizure - CoinDesk (2026-09-25)
- finextra.com: US prosecutors seize Tether -linked payment firm's bank accounts - FT - Finextra Research (2026-09-25)
- startupfortune.com: US seizure of $89 million pushes Tether's banking partner EQIBank toward collapse (2026-09-25)
- financefeeds.com: Tether Has Funds Stuck at EQIBank as Lender Faces Liquidation Risk - FinanceFeeds (2026-09-25)
- investinglive.com: Tether confirms funds stuck at troubled offshore bank EQIBank, says exposure is tiny (2026-09-25)
- finance.biggo.com: U.S. Department of Justice Seizes $90 Million from EQIBank Accounts - BigGo Finance (2026-09-25)