The police in Youxian, Hunan, China, have dismantled a USDT fraud ring, where suspects deceived foreign men into purchasing USDT and illegally transferred assets through malware.

On July 30, according to the Youxian police report, in the early morning of July 24, the Criminal Investigation Team of the Youxian Public Security Bureau in Hunan Province, China, successfully dismantled a "USDT" scam operation under the command of the bureau's party committee. Three suspects involved in the case, Tang, Zhang, and Xu, were arrested on site, and over 30 mobile phones, more than 10 computers, and over 30 foreign SIM cards were seized. After investigation, the suspects Tang, Zhang, and Xu had been using multiple foreign SIM cards to register accounts on social tools such as "Tantan International Version", Telegram, WHATSAPP, Twitter, etc., since April 2025. They created specific personas such as single wealthy women, expatriates, and crypto world players using edited and beautified photos of suspect Zhang to lure foreign men aged 26 and above to add them as friends. They chatted according to a pre-prepared script, initially building a romantic relationship to establish a certain emotional foundation. They then prompted the victims to purchase crypto assets (USDT) into a Trust Wallet, followed by introducing better mining farm mechanisms, airdrop rewards, and other policies to attract users to click on the website link. Once the victims clicked the link, the scam group could implant a Trojan virus to arbitrarily transfer the victims' crypto assets (USDT) from their Trust Wallet.