With the rise in crypto, there is a steady rise of scams in that department too. Recently, the US Secret Service has seized crypto worth more than $102 million in more than 250 fraud-related investigations.
David M. Smith, a senior executive at the US Secret Service talked about these recent crypto confiscations in an interview with CNBC yesterday. He serves as the 28th Assistant Director of the U.S. Secret Service Office of Investigations.
If any individual violates certain laws related to financial systems, the Secret Service is responsible for detecting, investigating, and arresting the person.
During the interview, Smith stated that their agents and analysts track the flow of Bitcoin and other cryptos on the blockchains. He elaborated on this, saying:
“When you follow a digital currency wallet, it’s no different than an email address that has some correlating identifiers.“
He added along, saying:
“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.”
According to the agency’s statistics, they’ve seized more than $102 million in crypto. Also, the publication states that they have made over 254 cases of crypto-related frauds.
The assistant director stated that once their agents detect illegal activity, they try to “deconstruct them”. In his words:
“You send me something bad on an email, I know there’s some criminal activity associated with that email address, I can deconstruct, find whatever tidbits of information that you used when you initially logged in or signed up for that email address.“
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