Cryptocurrencies were once seen as an unmitigated boon for criminals. Not anymore.
When a California man was scammed out of hundreds of thousands of dollars of cryptocurrency in a fake romance this year, Erin West was able to track and freeze
When a California man was scammed out of hundreds of thousands of dollars of cryptocurrency in a fake romance this year, Erin West was able to track and freeze the money.
West, a deputy district attorney who heads the high technology crimes unit in Santa Clara County, said she believes the scammer lives in a country where there isn’t an easy path to extradition and therefore is unlikely to be arrested anytime soon. The money, however, is a different story.
“Our bread and butter these days really is tracing cryptocurrency and trying to seize it and trying to get there faster than the bad guys are moving it somewhere where we can’t grab it,” West said.
West is among a growing number of state and local prosecutors and law enforcement officials who have embraced a handful of digital tools that can monitor blockchains, the digital ledgers that track every transaction for most cryptocurrencies.
West said her team tracked the victim’s money as it bounced from one digital wallet to another until it ended up at a major cryptocurrency exchange, where it appeared that the scammer was planning to launder the money or cash out. West sent a warrant to the exchange and froze the money, which she plans to return to the victim.
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