The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has announced the establishment of a new task force designed to investigate cryptocurrency and darknet crimes. Titled the Darknet Marketplace and Digital Currency Crimes Task Force, the interagency group will collaborate to target criminal activities in Arizona such as drug trafficking, money laundering, data theft, and child exploitation that use cryptocurrency and the dark web.
The task force was formed following a memorandum of understanding signed by representatives from Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Arizona, the Office for U.S. Attorneys, the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Postal Inspection Service. These five agencies have already worked together since 2017, successfully prosecuting a number of high-profile drug trafficking cases.
This new initiative echoes the Executive Order on Ensuring Responsible Development of Digital Assets signed by U.S. President Joe Biden in March 2020. It required federal agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission, the SEC, and the CFTC to coordinate their oversight of the industry and submit regular reports to Washington. This was followed in September by the White House issuing a “comprehensive framework” that called for cooperation between the SEC and the CFTC with domestic financial institutions and U.S. allies.
In February 2021, the FBI unveiled a new Virtual Asset Exploitation Unit to work with the Justice Department’s National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team, established in 2021 and dedicated to tackling crypto-related crime.
