- Jorge Figueira is charged in a U.S. money‑laundering case tied to over $1 billion in USDT transactions.
- Investigators say a network of shell companies and brokers converted illicit cash into USDT, layered it through many wallets, then returned dollars to bank accounts.
- The blockchain’s public ledger and controlled transactions let the FBI map funds in real time and link them to a single macro‑wallet that received about $1.05 billion.
- Compliance teams can detect similar schemes by flagging large stablecoin conversions, high‑velocity multi‑hop transfers, and opaque broker wires.
The unsealing of a criminal case charges Jorge Figueira, a Miami‑based Venezuelan and Spanish national, with Conspiracy to Launder Monetary Instruments (18 U.S.C. § 1956(h)) and related offenses. Authorities say the scheme ran from at least April 2024 through June 2025 and used digital assets to move illicit proceeds across borders.
Prosecutors allege Figueira presented a trade finance consulting front to U.S. banks while operating a network of shell companies that laundered proceeds from narcotics and counterfeit goods. He reportedly told a source his Miami office would have been “a Twinkie and a bag of popcorn” if raided.
The affidavit describes a three‑stage method. In placement, funds arrived as cash in Venezuela or as USDT sent by clients and were converted into stablecoins. During layering, funds were routed through many wallets — funds would, according to the affidavit, “transit through seven more wallets” and move “from one network to another” — to obscure origin. In integration, a consolidated “macro‑wallet” sent coins to brokers in the U.S., who exchanged them for dollars and wired proceeds to shell companies before paying clients.
Investigators used controlled transactions and blockchain analytics to trace flows in real time. In one test, $50,000 moved through nine crypto transactions in 22 minutes, a pattern the affidavit says has “no legitimate business purpose for the speed, structure, and layering of these transactions.” Tracing tied those flows to a macro‑wallet that received about $1.05 billion across 3,381 incoming transfers; the largest single incoming transfer was just over $4 million in October 2024.
The case shows how on‑chain transparency enabled law enforcement to map and corroborate the alleged laundering network and its transactions.
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