The FBI is setting up a cryptocurrency-focussed unit that will work closely with another new team at the Justice Department.
Seasoned prosecutor Eun Young Choi has been tapped to serve as the first director of the DoJ’s National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team (NCET).
She will work with the FBI’s new Virtual Asset Exploitation Unit, a specialised team of cryptocurrency experts dedicated to providing analysis, support, and training across the bureau.
The NCET will work on the department’s cases involving the criminal use of digital assets, with a particular focus on virtual currency exchanges, mixing and tumbling services, infrastructure providers, and other entities that are enabling the misuse of cryptocurrency and related technologies used in crimes.
Says Choi: “The NCET will play a pivotal role in ensuring that as the technology surrounding digital assets grows and evolves, the department in turn accelerates and expands its efforts to combat their illicit abuse by criminals of all kinds.”
News of the crypto teams comes shortly after the DoJ’s biggest ever crypto-related bust, when it arrested two people and seized $3.6 billion worth of bitcoin in relation to the 2016 hack of the Bitfinex exchange.
