Cartier Family Member Indicted for Using USDT to Launder Hundreds of Millions in Drug Trafficking Money

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York recently released an indictment that involves a self-purported descendant of the Cartier family, the French luxury goods manufacturer, as a pivotal part in a drug trafficking operation that used crypto to launder its proceeds.

According to the indictment, Maximilien De Hoop Cartier and five Colombian nationals also facing similar charges, laundered these drug trafficking funds using USDT, the largest U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin, through a series of shell companies that acted as enablers of an unlicensed OTC cryptocurrency exchange. Cartier used the accounts of Bullpix Solutions LLC, Vintech Capital LLC, VC Innovated Technologies LLC, AZ Technologies LLC, Softmill LLC, and Sun Technologies LLC. in financial institutions to act as unlicensed money-remitting businesses while declaring that these operated in the areas of software and technology instead.

Through this scheme, Cartier and the five indicted Colombian nationals managed to launder $14.5 million in USDT derived directly from the proceeds of the mentioned illegal activities between May 2023 and November 2023. Cartier’s business was even bigger, having allegedly executed “hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of unlawful transactions and laundered hundreds of millions in criminal proceeds” since 2020.

Damian Williams, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, stated that no matter the tools used, his office will continue to protect the U.S. financial system from exploitation. He declared:

The charges brought today demonstrate this Office’s commitment to prosecuting international drug traffickers and piercing complicated money laundering networks seeking to exploit the U.S financial system.

Recently, Tether partnered with Chainalysis, a blockchain data platform, to develop a tracking platform for monitoring USDT’s secondary market activities. The implementation of this tool will allow compliance officials to identify wallets that may pose risks or may be associated with illicit activities.

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