Since 2015, The US Secret Service Has Seized About $102 Million In Cryptocurrency.

Since 2015, the US Secret Service (USSS) has confiscated more than $102 million in cryptocurrencies during criminal and fraud investigations, according to David Smith, Assistant Director of Investigations. With 161 offices and over 3,000 staff, Smith supervises the USSS’s global investigation wing.

US Secret Service agents and analysts analyze the flow of bitcoin and other digital assets on various blockchain networks to track illegal financial transactions and crack down on them, he said. During that time, the Secret Service investigated 254 cryptocurrency-related incidents, according to the Secret Service Officer.

 The Secret Service Officer told CNBC. 

“When you follow a digital currency wallet, it’s not different than an email address that has some correlating identifiers… And once a person and another person make a transaction, and that gets into the blockchain, we have the ability to follow that email address or wallet address, if you will, and trace it through the blockchain.” 

Smith’s team of investigators collaborated with the Romanian Police to deconstruct the fraud in a case that involved 900 US citizens as victims. It was an example of false adverts selling non-existent luxury products on auction and retail websites.

Fake invoices bearing the names of legitimate companies were provided to customers at the time of purchase. According to Smith, the money acquired from the victims was turned into digital assets. He pointed to the fact that traditional fraud is now using cryptocurrencies to hide money.

 “One of the things about cryptocurrency is it moves money at a faster pace than the traditional format… What criminals want to do is sort of muddy the waters and make efforts to obfuscate their activities. What we want to do is to track that as quickly as we can, aggressively as we can, in a linear fashion.” 

According to the Secret Service agent, one of the most common methods used by cryptocurrency fraudsters is to convert stolen bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies into stablecoins to minimize market volatility.

A seizure warrant was issued by the USSS for 482 bitcoins and 1.7 million USDT from an alleged Ponzi scheme kingpin. According to the information, ordinary people invested in Banana Fund, a bitcoin crowdfunding platform for businesses, in exchange for shares in the fund.

Later, the fund administrator claimed that the plan had failed and that he would refund the investors 557 bitcoins and 1.73 million USDT. The victims, on the other hand, approached the USSS, claiming that the operator had not refunded their funds. He instead withdrew 100 bitcoins from the fund for his own purposes.

The agency was able to find 482 bitcoins and 1,721,868 USDT in one cryptocurrency account related to the Banana Fund administrator after conducting its investigation. It obtained a seizure warrant for the digital currency it had recovered.

DISCLAIMER: The Information on this website is provided as general market commentary and does not constitute investment advice. We encourage you to do your own research before investing.

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