Jorge Figueira: 12 Years for a $1 Billion Tether Laundering Network That Served Drug Traffickers

On Tuesday 3 November 2026, in a federal courtroom in Alexandria, Virginia, a 60-year-old Venezuelan living in Miami was sent to prison for 12 years. Jorge Figueira had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to launder money. Prosecutors said he laundered billions of dollars for numerous and varied illicit actors, including drug-trafficking organisations. More than $1 billion moved through one identified crypto wallet and various financial accounts, the US Attorney's Office said, and most of the money coming in arrived from crypto trading platforms, the crypto version of a broker. Court records say that wallet took in more than $1 billion in Tether and sent about the same amount back out.

US District Judge Rossie D. Alston Jr. imposed 144 months, three years less than the 15 years prosecutors wanted. He added three years of supervised release, a period of court monitoring after prison that works much like parole. Figueira also agreed to a $1 billion money judgment. That is not a fine: it is a court order recording a debt to the government, which can be collected from whatever assets are found. It does not mean he has $1 billion.

Prosecutors accept that some of the money might have come from legitimate activity, but said it had been mixed with criminal proceeds. His lawyer says the headline number overstates Figueira's role. That argument is set out in full below.

Tether, the company whose token ran through the wallet, is not accused of anything in this case. Figueira is the only defendant named in reports of the case.

How drug cash became a digital dollar

Tether's token, USDT, is a stablecoin: a digital dollar, built so that one token is always worth about one US dollar. It moves between wallets, the crypto version of an account, at any hour and across any border, with no bank in the middle. For someone holding a suitcase of cash in one country who wants clean dollars in another, that is the attraction.

Figueira's network worked in plain steps, according to the Justice Department and court records as reported by El Diario, the Miami Herald and blockchain analytics firm Elliptic.

First, the cash. People in the network collected it from representatives of drug traffickers, and bulk cash in Venezuela was converted into USDT. Some clients simply handed over USDT directly.

Second, the shuffle. The tokens were split across several wallets and moved rapidly from one to the next to hide where they began. In one FBI-controlled deal of $50,000 described in the January charging papers, Elliptic counted nine crypto transfers in 22 minutes before the money reached a broker.

Third, the swap. So-called liquidity providers, brokers who buy crypto for ordinary dollars, took the USDT and sent dollars to bank accounts belonging to four companies owned and operated by Figueira. Those firms then paid the clients, keeping a commission. According to the charging papers as read by Elliptic, Figueira described his business to US financial institutions as a trade finance consulting company.

Outgoing money went to businesses and people in the United States and overseas, including Colombia, China, Panama and Mexico, the US Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia said.

One wallet, more than $1 billion

The clearest picture of the scale is a single wallet. Court records say it received more than $1 billion in Tether, sent out approximately the same amount and rarely held a substantial balance. It behaved less like a savings account than a pipe.

Elliptic, reading the charges when they were unsealed in January 2026, put the intake at $1.05 billion in USDT across 3,381 incoming transfers between April 2024 and June 2025. That averages about $310,000 a transfer. The largest was just over 4 million USDT, in October 2024. The firm called it a macro-wallet, the point where the streams came together, and said Figueira himself had described a wallet that would reach $1,000,000,000 in value.

Court records say the conspiracy ran from at least January 2024 through November 2025.

Banknotes as passwords

The crypto was the modern half of the operation. The handover of the cash was much older, and it needed a way for strangers to trust each other.

Participants used encrypted messages and coded language, and couriers proved who they were with verification codes made from the serial numbers of US or foreign banknotes, according to the Miami Herald's account of the court record. A serial number can work as a simple password: one side holds the note, the other has been told the number, and a courier who can match the two is the right courier.

The FBI's $330,000 in test deals

The case began far from Miami. In October 2023 an FBI confidential source met an intermediary in Panama City and claimed to have cash from counterfeit merchandise. The intermediary said the money could be cleaned up easily.

Investigators then arranged seven controlled deals with Figueira's network, totalling $330,000. In those deals Figueira arranged for Tether to be paid into wallets, and matching dollar amounts appeared in FBI-controlled accounts within hours. Fees ranged from less than 1% to 10%.

Investigators met Figueira in person in Miami in September 2024 and February 2025. Prosecutors say he acknowledged that some of the money he handled came from drug trafficking, and suggested coded language to keep drug proceeds separate from legitimate funds.

The links in the filings, and his lawyer's answer

The government's sentencing papers went beyond drugs. The Miami Herald reported that the government's sentencing memorandum said Figueira acknowledged laundering proceeds from sanctioned Venezuelan oil companies. In court filings that relied in part on blockchain analysis, prosecutors also linked funds moving through the network to individuals associated with the Houthi movement, to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, to a sanctioned Russian oligarch, to a sanctioned Russian bank and to an Iranian oil broker. Those are prosecutors' links between flows of money. The offence Figueira admitted is money laundering conspiracy.

Defence lawyer Arthur Louis Wallace III answered in his own sentencing memorandum. He disputed the government's reliance on the total volume of transactions, saying it overstated Figueira's role, and argued that the sentence should be measured by the seven FBI deals. Those deals, he said, came to $330,000 and earned Figueira's companies only $9,823.63 in fees, about 3%. He said the businesses were legally incorporated in Florida, paid federal taxes and kept documented records. He said Figueira had no previous criminal record, had cooperated with investigators and lived with his wife in a modest rental apartment in Miami.

Prosecutors replied that the shell companies, the coded messages, the crypto wallets and the repeated transfers showed an intent to hide the money. Judge Alston overruled Figueira's objection to the pre-sentence report and found that the federal sentencing guidelines called for life in prison. The law capped this offence at 20 years. He settled on 12.