A Court Cleared Three 9/11 Groups to Pursue $344 Million in Blocked Crypto
The court granted permission to pursue. It did not decide who owns the money.

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What the court did on July 9

In April 2026, Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned and blocked two digital wallets holding roughly $344 million in Tether tokens, adding the wallet addresses to the Central Bank of Iran's sanctions listing. Note the word the court uses for ownership: the assets are "purportedly owned by" the Central Bank of Iran. Who owns them is the first of the four questions the court left open.

Three groups of 9/11 plaintiffs, the Havlish, Breitweiser, and Ryan groups, asked the court in Manhattan for permission to pursue that money. On July 9, Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn granted all three motions (In Re: Terrorist Attacks on September 11, 2001, No. 1:03-md-01570 (S.D.N.Y.), ECF 12174).

Section 1610(c) of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act is a procedural checkpoint with two requirements: that the foreign government was properly given notice of the judgment, and that a reasonable period has passed since the judgment was entered. Judge Netburn found both. That finding is not a formality. On April 14 the same court made the same kind of finding as to purportedly Iranian bitcoin, and granted it for all of the moving plaintiffs other than the Eaton plaintiffs (ECF 11973). The Eaton plaintiffs did not clear it, which is how you know it is a real test.

So those families now have permission to pursue the Tether by any lawful means, including attachment or execution.

The four questions the order does not answer

The court was explicit. As it has stressed before, section 1610(c) orders "are not writs of execution or attachment" for any assets. This is permission to try, not a transfer of money.

Judge Netburn wrote that she "need not make any decisions about asset ownership, agency or instrumentality status, TRIA's requirements, or priority to the assets," and that all of them are "reserved for later proceedings." In plain terms, four things are still open:

• Who owns the Tether. Not decided.
• Whether these are the assets of an agency or instrumentality. Not decided.
• Whether the terrorism insurance statute applies to these assets. Not decided.
• Who stands first in line to collect. Not decided.

Another group of victims holds an attachment order on the same money

A separate group of terrorism victims, the Benson plaintiffs, is not part of the 9/11 cases at all. They are roughly 1,341 U.S. servicemembers and surviving family members harmed in Iran-sponsored attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they hold their own multibillion-dollar compensatory judgments against Iran. In March and April 2026 they obtained orders of attachment, which the court confirmed on July 16, 2026, reaching the same two OFAC-blocked wallets that hold the Tether. Their filings do not claim priority over the 9/11 families. What they create is an overlap: two groups of judgment creditors of comparable size reaching for the same Iranian assets.

An attachment order is a provisional step that secures property while a case continues. It is not a turnover, not a payment, and not a ruling that one group outranks another. Who collects first is "priority to the assets," one of the four issues the court expressly reserved for later.

The separate bitcoin track, and why it may pause

The 127,271 bitcoin case is a different track that often gets folded into the same headline. LuBian is the claimant that says those coins belong to it. On July 9 it asked the court to pause two suits, Fritz and Relvas, until the forfeiture case is finished (United States v. Approximately 127,271 bitcoin, No. 1:25-cv-05745 (E.D.N.Y.), ECF 473). Those suits, Fritz v. Iran and China Investment Development Group, No. 1:25-cv-07093, and Relvas, No. 1:26-cv-00642, are the ones Iran judgment creditors filed to attach the same coins.

LuBian's argument runs like this. Until the forfeiture case decides whether the coins can be forfeited at all, and what LuBian's own interest in them is, there is nothing there to attach, so the creditor suits should sit still. On July 14 Judge Rachel Kovner directed the Fritz, Havlish, and Relvas claimants and the government to respond by July 16.

An order setting a briefing schedule is not a ruling. The stay has not been decided, and no date is set for it.

On July 20, another party entered the same forfeiture case. Prince Global Holdings, a British Virgin Islands liquidation estate connected to the Prince Group, filed a statement of interest (No. 1:25-cv-05745, ECF 485). It is a different kind of claimant from the terrorism-judgment creditors, and its interest arises out of separate insolvency proceedings, not a terrorism judgment. It is one more party telling the court it has an interest in the same coins. It does not change the families' claims, and the court has not ruled on it.

The families filed their own case for the bitcoin

On June 13, 2026, the Havlish families filed their own suit over the same 127,271 bitcoin, this time against the United States. In Havlish v. United States, No. 1:26-cv-03555 (E.D.N.Y.), they name the government "as Garnishee of approximately 127,271 Bitcoin" and ask for turnover under Section 201(a) of the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (TRIA), codified at 28 U.S.C. 1610 note. The prayer is narrow. They ask that the coins be turned over "in partial satisfaction of their outstanding compensatory damages judgments." Compensatory only. No punitive damages are sought here.

The suit still has to prove what Judge Netburn's order reserved. Whether the coins are the property of an agency or instrumentality of Iran, tied to the Rafsanjan mining operation, is pleaded here and decided nowhere. Even the origin is hedged in the complaint's own words: "Some, or all, of the Blocked Cryptocurrency was mined in Iran." The case was noticed as related to the forfeiture matter, No. 1:25-cv-05745, and to Fritz, No. 1:25-cv-07093.

How this connects to the USVSST Fund, and how it does not

Forfeited money has funded part of the Victims of State Sponsored Terrorism Fund, so it is fair to ask whether this $344 million eventually lands there. But the July 9 order is a different mechanism. These plaintiffs are pursuing assets directly on their own judgments, not through the Fund's pro rata distributions.

The judgments driving this fight are the Iran judgments, which run on the state-sponsor exception, and that is the only 9/11 track that feeds the Fund. The separate 9/11 case against Saudi Arabia runs on a different law, which is why the two cases sit on different legal tracks.

The two tracks can coexist. Under 34 U.S.C. 20144(d)(5)(B), receiving money from the Fund does not extinguish your judgment. You keep your creditor rights in the unpaid and outstanding amounts.

What any of this means for one family's claim depends on that family's judgment and its posture in these cases. That is a question for your attorney, not for a blog post.

Why the token itself is the harder problem

Even after ownership, agency, and priority are settled, there is a step most coverage skips. Blocked Tether is not like cash sitting in a seized safe. A USDT token is not bearer property. It is a liability of its issuer, Tether Limited, a promise the company records and can freeze or move on its own books. So turning roughly $344 million in blocked tokens into money a family can actually collect requires Tether the company to act. That is true on the families' track just as much as on any other creditor's.

Two cautions follow. First, the plaintiffs describe the mechanics as burning the blocked tokens and re-minting them to a new holder. Those words are the plaintiffs' characterization. They do not appear anywhere in Tether's terms of service, so do not read them as something Tether has agreed to do. Second, those same terms say they are "interpreted in all respects as a British Virgin Islands contract." Whether a United States court can order a British Virgin Islands issuer to act is a live question, not a formality, and no court has decided it. That is a steadier reason to keep watching this docket than any race to be first in line.

What to watch next

Turnover motions on the Tether. That is the proceeding where ownership and priority get decided, and it is the one worth watching. No date is set.

The court's ruling on LuBian's stay request in the bitcoin cases. Responses were due July 16. No decision date is set.

The families' own turnover request against the United States in Havlish v. United States. That is the case that asks a court to actually hand over the bitcoin, and it puts the reserved agency-or-instrumentality question in front of a judge. No date is set.

In the background, the judgment paperwork kept moving. On July 10, Judge George B. Daniels authorized entry of partial final judgments under Rule 54(b) for compensatory damages for the plaintiffs listed in Exhibits A through D of his order (ECF 12177). That same order denied, without prejudice, the additional damages those plaintiffs could still seek from Iran, punitive damages among them.

Separately, the clerk filed certificates of mailing for default-judgment notices with certified Farsi translations: on July 13 in the Ashton matter, for a package that went out July 10, and on July 15 in the Burnett and Arias matters. Giving notice is the step that starts the clock a 1610(c) finding later depends on.

Then the judgments themselves landed. On July 22, the Clerk entered eight money judgments against Iran for these plaintiff groups (ECF 12195 through 12202). Those are the enforceable creditor judgments that the attachment and TRIA steps all rely on. They do not pay anyone. Iran does not appear and does not pay, and a judgment does not touch the blocked tokens by itself. It is the status a creditor needs before any of the collection machinery can run. The punitive and additional damages left out of these judgments are the ones the July 10 order denied without prejudice: put off, not lost, and they can still be sought later.

None of that pays anyone. It is the scaffolding that has to be standing before any of the rest can happen.