The United States Internal Revenue Service will deploy specialists next 30 days to four continents to combat cybercrime, with a particular focus on tax and financial crimes that use cryptocurrency.
That is part of a pilot program the IRS announced past week where “cyber attachés” will be sent to Sydney, Bogota, Frankfurt and Singapore from June to September.
” To be able to effectively combat cybercrime, we need secure that our foreign counterparts have access to the same tools and expertise we have here in the United States,” stated IRS Criminal Investigation Chief Jim Lee in a statement.
David Strager, who will go to Sydney, has overseen criminal investigations regarding cryptocurrency tax evasion, money laundering and international fraud, reports by the IRS.
“Strager holds a variety of digital currency certifications and active licenses for digital currency tracing tools,” the IRS said.
Cuong Ly, who will be based in Singapore likewise has cryptocurrency experience.
He was part of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Cyber Task Force investigating fraud within cryptocurrency exchanges.
The IRS has 20 field offices in the United States and 12 “attaché posts abroad,” reports by a press release.
Breaking records
The IRS’ Criminal Investigation unit confiscated “record amounts of data and cryptocurrency,” Lee stated in an annual 2022 fiscal year report.
Several key cases from a year ago involved a joint federal investigation which led to the seizure of Hydra — a darknet market that accounted for about 80 % of all darknet market-related cryptocurrency transactions, reports by the IRS.
The IRS was likewise involved in what it reveals was the “ largest single financial seizure in Government history” when the Justice Department arrested a couple for allegedly conspiring to launder cryptocurrency that was stolen within a 2016 hack of cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex.
“The CI Cyber Felony Unit, with the assistance of other United States authorities traced the stolen funds on the Bitcoin blockchain tech to numerous destinations, including accounts at the darknet market AlphaBay, 7 interconnected accounts at U.S.-based virtual currency exchanges, numerous unhosted Bitcoin wallets, accounts owned by the defendants at 6 virtual currency exchanges, and to an unhosted Bitcoin wallet containing a bulk of the stolen bitcoin,” the IRS stated in the report.
