Several of the Targets Also Worked with Narcotrafficker and Former Olympic Snowboarder Ryan Wedding
WASHINGTON-Today, as part of Operation Economic Outcast, the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated eight money services businesses based in Canada that enable the Iranian regime, sanctioned entities associated with the regime, and other illicit actors that move assets into and out of Iran. These companies facilitate the exchange of Iranian rials and other currencies for digital assets to enable international transactions involving Iran. Many of these businesses have facilitated transactions with sanctioned Iranian digital asset exchanges, as well as with digital asset addresses associated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
“Canada cannot be a safe haven for illicit financial facilitators that provide sanctions evasion services to the Iranian regime and its proxies,” said Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent. “Treasury will pursue and disrupt the Iranian regime’s financial channels anywhere in the world.”
In August, Treasury launched Operation Economic Outcast to sever the economic lifelines that sustain the Iranian regime and its IRGC, including Tehran’s exploitation of cryptocurrency as a tool of choice for sanctions evasion. Today’s designations are a continuation of Treasury’s comprehensive campaign to disrupt the regime’s exploitation of digital assets to fund terrorism, human rights abuses, and attacks on U.S. personnel and allies. These designations also follow previous OFAC sanctions on digital asset exchanges that have moved digital assets abroad on behalf of the Iranian regime, including the June 2, 2026 designations of Iranian exchanges Nobitex, Wallex, Bitpin, and Ramzinex, and the August 7, 2026 designations of Aban Tether Exchange and SHPS Shelbit (Shelbit), which operates the Shelbit Exchange that has moved millions of dollars on behalf of the IRGC.
Today’s action was coordinated with the Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and FINTRAC, Canada’s financial intelligence unit. This action is also taken in coordination with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and reflects the Trump Administration’s whole-of-government effort to combat the illicit use of digital assets for drug trafficking. Several of the entities designated in this action have also worked with the OFAC-sanctioned Canadian drug trafficker Ryan Wedding. Wedding has used money exchange businesses in the Vancouver and Toronto areas to launder billions of dollars in drug proceeds. He has used couriers to transport bulk cash to those firms, which convert the funds to digital assets to send abroad. Wedding was apprehended in January 2026, but he worked with several of the money services businesses designated today to transfer millions of dollars’ worth of digital assets prior to being taken into U.S. custody.