New US team to hold probe into illicit cryptocurrency schemes

WASHINGTON: The Justice Department named a veteran cybersecurity prosecutor to lead a new team dedicated to investigating and prosecuting illicit cryptocurrency schemes carried out by cyber criminals and nation states, foreign media reported.

Eun Young Choi will be the first director of the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team, which will serve as the focal point for efforts to identify and dismantle the misuse of cryptocurrencies and other digital assets, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco announced.

“If we’re going to see — as I think we will — cryptocurrency gaining more traction and gaining wider adoption, we’ve got to make sure that the ecosystem that they operate in can be trusted and, frankly, can be policed,” Monaco said in an interview. “We’re going to make it our business to go after them and get those proceeds back and make it clear to them that they can’t hide.”

The $2 trillion market for cryptocurrencies has boomed as companies and investors look to reap higher returns and get a foothold in a technology seen as still in its early days.

Prosecutors and regulators are rushing to determine how to police that space — as well as the market for other digital assets such as nonfungible tokens — which has become a new frontier for criminals and rogue nations to steal and launder billions of dollars through anonymous avenues like blockchain transactions, encryption and digital wallets.

Illicit transactions jumped almost 80% to $14 billion, an all-time high, in 2021, according to blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis. Still, crime made up a much smaller share of total crypto transaction volume, which increased drastically last year, the firm said.

One of the main focuses for the new team will be rooting out illegal activity on virtual currency exchanges as well as cryptocurrency tumbler, or mixing, services, which are used to obscure tainted funds, Choi said in an interview.