The US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned eight Canadian money services businesses on Friday 6 November 2026, saying they blockchain, where users swap tokens directly from their own wallets without handing custody of their funds to a company.">swap Iranian rials for crypto and so give the Iranian regime a way to move money in and out of the country. According to Treasury’s press release, many of them dealt with already-sanctioned Iranian exchanges and with addresses linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). OFAC also published six TRON addresses tied to four of the firms.
Within hours, all six were frozen for USDT. The Tether contract on TRON added them to its blacklist at about 01:34 UTC on Saturday, according to the contract’s own records, which Coindaro read on TronGrid.
Treasury says several of the same firms laundered cash for Ryan Wedding, the former Canadian Olympic snowboarder now held in the United States on drug trafficking and murder charges. The action belongs to what Treasury calls Operation Economic Outcast, its campaign against Iran’s revenue and payment channels.
“Canada cannot be a safe haven for illicit financial facilitators that provide sanctions evasion services to the Iranian regime and its proxies,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in the release. Everything below about what the firms did is Treasury’s account. It cites no charge or court finding against the firms themselves, and none of the eight had published a response by Saturday 7 November, about 13:30 UTC.
OFAC sanctions eight Canadian money services businesses under Iran order
The legal basis is Executive Order 13902, which lets Treasury target people and companies operating in named sectors of the Iranian economy. Treasury used it here “for operating in the digital asset sector of the Iranian economy”. The OFAC recent actions page for 6 November lists the eight under the Iran programme, each with its trade names, its addresses in Ontario, British Columbia or Quebec and its Canadian MSB registration number, the number FINTRAC gives every licensed money services business.
According to the release, the action was coordinated with FinCEN, Treasury’s anti-money-laundering bureau, with FINTRAC and with the Drug Enforcement Administration. FINTRAC confirmed its part the same day in a short statement (more on that below).
Treasury presents the eight as a sample of a wider problem. Canada, it says, hosts hundreds of money services businesses that move funds into and out of Iran, through cash-based transfer systems or by turning cash into digital assets. Canadian and international media had already pointed to these risks, the release adds, yet the firms designated on Friday were still operating, and several had changed their business names and addresses to avoid detection.
What Treasury says each firm did
The release gives a paragraph per firm. The amounts come in rough bands, from “thousands” to “millions of dollars”, and Treasury gives no total for the group.
Million Exchange and Amin Exchange: Iran flows and drug cash
Diverse Trade Inc, which trades as Million Exchange in Ontario, advertises rial exchange and the management of customers’ digital assets. Treasury says its addresses sent the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of dollars to IRGC or other terrorism-related addresses. It also says the firm bought digital assets with cash from drug sales and sent them back to drug dealers, and that Wedding used it this way.
Amin Exchange covers two companies: 1380079 BC Limited in British Columbia and a close Ontario affiliate, Top PC Technician Inc, which uses the same name. Treasury says their addresses received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Shelbit, an exchange run by the Georgia-based company SHPS Shelbit that OFAC sanctioned in August, and that the business laundered millions of dollars in drug proceeds at sites in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. The Vancouver branch, according to Treasury, took Wedding’s cash, turned it into digital assets and sent them abroad on his instructions.
The name has appeared before. On 19 May 2026 Treasury designated an Iran-based exchange house, Ebrahimi and Associates Partnership Company, “commonly known as Amin Exchange”. Neither OFAC nor Treasury says whether the Canadian firms are connected to it, and they are listed as separate legal entities.
NIA Nations, Farah, CCC, B Galaxy and Darvish
NIA Nations Currency Ltd, in British Columbia, advertises digital-asset exchange and transfers from Iran to Canada. Treasury says its addresses dealt with IRGC-linked addresses and with four sanctioned Iranian exchanges: Nobitex, Wallex, Ramzinex and Bitpin.
2397639 Ontario Ltd, known as Farah Exchange, presents itself as an Iranian exchange operating in Canada. One of its addresses did hundreds of thousands of dollars of business with Shelbit and Wallex, according to Treasury. The firm also sent thousands of dollars in digital assets to terrorism-linked addresses and millions to addresses associated with Wedding.
CCC Inc and B Galaxy Inc are two Ontario companies working from the same location; B Galaxy trades as Cryptoyal. A CCC website says the firm is licensed in Iran and Canada, and Treasury says one of its addresses received hundreds of thousands of dollars from terrorism-linked addresses. B Galaxy, the release says, advertises unlimited amounts of digital assets in exchange for Iranian currency.
Darvish Exchange, also listed as Kanata MD Inc, advertises bitcoin for rials. One of its addresses transacted with Nobitex, Wallex, Aban Tether Exchange and Shelbit, according to the release.
| Registered name (OFAC) | Trade name | Province | Established | TRON addresses listed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1380079 BC Ltd | Amin Exchange Vancouver | British Columbia | 26 Sep 2022 | 3 |
| Top PC Technician Inc | Amin Exchange Toronto | Ontario | 17 May 2021 | 0 |
| Diverse Trade Inc | Million Exchange | Ontario | 7 May 2018 | 1 |
| 2397639 Ontario Ltd | Farah Exchange | Ontario | 27 Nov 2013 | 1 |
| CCC Inc | Ccurrency Exchange, Sarafi C | Ontario | 22 May 2020 | 1 |
| B Galaxy Inc | Cryptoyal | Ontario | 13 Aug 2019 | 0 |
| Darvish Exchange | Kanata MD Inc | Ontario | 3 May 2022 | 0 |
| NIA Nations Currency Ltd | Nia Exchange | British Columbia | 9 Oct 2019 | 0 |
Source: OFAC SDN entries of 6 November 2026. Some firms also list Montreal, Toronto or Thornhill addresses.
Six TRON addresses, frozen by Tether on Saturday
OFAC attached six digital currency addresses, all on TRON, to four of the eight firms: three to 1380079 BC Ltd and one each to Farah Exchange, CCC Inc and Million Exchange. There are no bitcoin or Ethereum addresses in the listing. Treasury’s text says Darvish and NIA Nations used addresses too, but their entries carry none.
TRON carries a large share of all USDT transfers, which is why its addresses keep turning up in sanctions files. Our report on the $2.2 trillion in stablecoins TRON moved gives the scale.
Coindaro read the six addresses on TronGrid on Saturday 7 November at 13:16 UTC. The table shows each wallet’s latest USDT transfer, not its total traffic, and the reading is ours, not Treasury’s.
| Address (start) | Firm | Created | Last USDT transfer | USDT balance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TLyRLC | Amin (1380079 BC) | 17 Jul 2025 | 5,273 out on 8 Dec 2025 | about 0.40 |
| THauYJ | Amin (1380079 BC) | 12 Aug 2025 | 166,826 out on 3 Oct 2025 | 0 |
| TJT3JZ | Amin (1380079 BC) | 26 Jan 2026 | 48.19 out on 11 Mar 2026 | 0 |
| TW5NEa | Farah Exchange | 25 Mar 2022 | 42,776 out on 27 May 2026 | 0 |
| TCreRM | CCC Inc | 9 Apr 2025 | 69.5 in on 18 Nov 2025 | 69.5 |
| TJHZsw | Million Exchange | 11 Oct 2024 | 1,600 out on 19 Feb 2026 | 0 |
The biggest of these last transfers, 166,826 USDT, left one of the Amin wallets on 3 October 2025. The most recent came from Farah’s address on 27 May 2026, and no USDT has moved on any of the six since. Together they held about 70 USDT on Saturday, nearly all of it the 69.5 USDT that reached CCC’s address a year ago. Farah’s wallet also holds about 1,878 TRX, TRON’s own token, which a USDT freeze does not touch.
Tether has frozen all six. The USDT contract’s event log shows each address added to the blacklist between 01:34:18 and 01:34:33 UTC on 7 November, and a query of the contract at 13:17 UTC returned “blacklisted” for every one. We found no statement from Tether on the six. The issuer says it often freezes wallets before sanctions are announced, a claim Senate staff disputed in a case covered in our report on Tether freeze timing; here the freeze came after the listing.
Farah’s address has a history. The same contract log shows it blacklisted once before, on 25 March 2026, and taken off the list on 14 May. Thirteen days later it sent out 42,776 USDT, its last transfer. Neither Tether nor Treasury has said why it was listed or released.
So the freeze bites on very little. The heavier part of an OFAC listing is the cut-off: US persons can no longer deal with the firms, and any bank, exchange or stablecoin issuer that touches them or the six addresses takes a legal risk. It is the same pattern as the North Korean IT worker wallets OFAC listed on 28 October, which had moved tens of millions before the listing and held about $2,300 after.
What the designation does to the firms and their counterparties
All property and interests in property of the eight that sit in the United States, or with US persons, are blocked and must be reported to OFAC. Any company owned 50% or more by one or more blocked persons is blocked as well. Without an OFAC licence, US persons may not deal with them.
For banks outside the US the risk is secondary sanctions. Each SDN entry points to Section 2 of E.O. 13902, which lets Treasury penalise a foreign financial institution that knowingly conducts or facilitates a significant transaction for a blocked person. A Canadian bank, a European crypto platform or an Asian OTC desk that keeps serving these firms can therefore be hit itself, for example by losing access to US correspondent accounts. Treasury also points to its FAQs 1250 and 1257 on the risks of dealing with Iranian exchanges.
Ryan Wedding: the drug case inside the Iran file
The second thread of the release is Wedding. Treasury says the trafficker, already under OFAC sanctions, used exchange businesses around Vancouver and Toronto to launder “billions of dollars” of drug proceeds, with couriers bringing bulk cash that the firms turned into digital assets. He was apprehended in January 2026, Treasury says, and before that used several of the firms designated on Friday to move millions of dollars’ worth of digital assets.
The Canadian Press, in a report carried by Global News on 6 November, fills in the rest. Wedding rode snowboard slalom for Canada at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, was convicted in the US of conspiracy to distribute cocaine and sentenced in 2010, and was arrested in Mexico in January. He faces drug trafficking, murder and attempted-murder charges and is in federal custody awaiting two trials, in March and October 2027.
Nobitex, Wallex, Shelbit: the sanctioned exchanges behind the case
Friday’s action builds on earlier ones. On 2 June 2026 Treasury designated Nobitex, Iran’s largest crypto exchange, along with Wallex, Bitpin and Ramzinex. On 7 August it added Aban Tether Exchange and SHPS Shelbit, whose Shelbit Exchange it said had moved millions of dollars for the IRGC. Treasury launched Operation Economic Outcast the same month.
Those designations turned the biggest Iranian exchanges into blocked counterparties. The Canadian firms, in Treasury’s account, are the next layer out: shops abroad that let Iranians and the regime move value through those exchanges with stablecoins and cash.
The pace has picked up. Under the same operation OFAC acted against Iranian shadow fleet networks on 21 October and against a maritime fraud network built on false ship flags on 4 November. Separately, on Thursday 5 November, the day before the Canadian action, it named 45 more targets linked to Cambodia’s Prince Group, as told in our report on the new Prince Group sanctions.
FINTRAC confirms its role but names no firm
FINTRAC published a public statement on 6 November saying it had coordinated with OFAC and FinCEN on the sanctions against the eight businesses. It did not name them: Canadian law bars the agency from disclosing compliance actions against specific businesses, except when it publishes an administrative penalty.
The statement is mostly a record of FINTRAC’s own crackdown on money services businesses dealing in virtual currency. It says it has revoked the registrations of 161 of them since the start of 2026, more than in the previous three years combined, and that over the past year it imposed penalties of more than C$198 million on nine such businesses, for failures that include not registering and not reporting large virtual currency transactions. A law passed in March 2026, C-12, raised the maximum penalty for running one without registration to a C$5 million fine or five years in prison.
No statement from Finance Canada or Global Affairs Canada appeared in the sources we found by Saturday about 13:30 UTC, and the Canadian Press report quoted only Treasury. FINTRAC did not say whether the eight keep their registrations, each of which has a public MSB number, or whether Canadian banks are expected to close their accounts.
How a crypto sanctions listing works
An OFAC listing seizes nothing by itself. It tells every US person and company to stop dealing with the named party and to block what they hold for it. When OFAC adds crypto addresses, US exchanges and stablecoin issuers screen for them, and many non-US platforms do the same to keep their access to dollars. Issuers of USDT and USDC can freeze tokens at a listed address, as Tether did here; our guide to the differences between USDT and USDC explains how each issuer controls its token.
What comes next sits mostly in Canada: whether FINTRAC cancels the eight registrations and whether the firms, which Treasury says have changed names before, reopen under new ones. Treasury has given no date for its next Iran-related action.