Tether, the issuer of the USDT stablecoin, has blocked at least six addresses that may be associated with the Russian financial pyramid Finiko, according to analytics group ChainArgos.

Five addresses were blocked on the Ethereum blockchain, and another one was blocked on Tron.

“Based on the Ethereum addresses, there are a few suspicious transfers that may or may not be related to the Finico pyramid scheme, but otherwise nothing out of the ordinary,” the analysts wrote.

Now all the wallets mentioned in the post are practically empty.

Finiko operated from December 1, 2018 to July 28, 2021. As in other pyramid schemes, investors were attracted by large profits. At the time of the arrest of the founder of the pyramid, Kirill Doronin, law enforcement agencies reported that the damage from the scheme amounted to 13 million rubles. According to Chainalysis, the amount stolen may exceed 100 billion rubles. Doronin himself did not admit guilt. He still claims that people did not bring any money – only bitcoins.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs recently said that the number of court sentences handed down in the Russian Federation in cases related to cryptocurrency crimes has increased by 5,000% per year. From August 2012 to October 2017, 72 verdicts were issued in Russia in cases related to cryptocurrency. And only one of them was not drug related. And during the period from 2017 to 2021, more than 2,500 sentences have already been passed in such cases.