Thoughts On Cryptocurrencies Worth Over $102 Million Seized By The Secrets Service.
I've always felt the role of the U.S Secrets Service was only to protect and oversee the welfare of the President and political figures in the country but that is just one of their major roles and also their most publicised role. Their second major role is to investigate financial crimes and fraudulent activities carried out against the financial infrastructure of the United States alongside other law enforcement agencies.
Till date, over $102 million have been seized by the U.S. Secrets service from fraudulent activities involving cryptocurrencies both in the United States and outside it borders . These cryptocurrencies were obtained from fraudulent activities ranging from fake online mart and auctions to as high as ransomeware by Russian and North Korean Cybercriminals.
The Secrets service mostly gets involved in these cases once United States citizens are victims for example, the famous fake online aution and sales platforms where almost a thousand US citizens were defrauded when they try to purchase items feom the plaform that really didn't exist . The victims were also given fake invoices to make both the platform and the purchase seem legit and the funds gotten from the victims were converted to cryptocurrencies for easy laundering.
The seizing of funds however is quite easy when these criminals ry to launder the funds via a crypto exchange otherwise this would have been pretty difficult. However, it is actually quite easy to monitor the flow of funds from victims on the blockchain and this has helped the agency in cracking down so many cases. The $102 million dollars in cryptos were seized from over 250 cases making the Secrets Service one of the most successful financial crimes agency in the world.
Although from my experience on seized funds by the government and law enforcement agencies in my country, I tend to wonder about the future of these funds. Taking my country as a case study, after the announcement of a crackdown and seizing of funds from criminals, the citizens are no longer updated about the funds, where they were and what they were used for. There have been reports of the funds being returned back to those it was seized from due to the corrupt nature of the heads of these agencies. So I really don't take the news of seized funds so seriously these days, but I believe things would be different with the United States as their system is more transparent than in my country.